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A  LOVER  OF   THE  CHAIR 


A  LOVER  OF  THE  CHAIR 


BY 


SHERLOCK  BRONSON  GASS 


BOSTON 

MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 
MDCCCCXIX 


$7(0 


COPYRIGHT-   1919 
BY  MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 


IHE'PLIKPTON-PRESS 

NORWOOD-UASS-U-S-A 


?s 

3  5"  I  3 


To 
PROSSER  HALL  FRYE 


PREFACE 

YTETHAT  I  have  tried  to  treat  with  consistent 
V  V  seriousness  hi  these  essays  is  the  point  of  view 
of  the  central  figure,  whose  outlook  was  intended  to 
give  to  the  series  some  measure  of  continuity  and 
singleness  of  purpose.  A  fling  at  the  spirit  of  one's 
age  is  not  to  be  indulged  in  lightly,  though  it  may,  I 
hope,  be  undertaken  with  good  humor.  That,  at  all 
events,  was  the  point  of  view  of  the  Lover  of  the 
Chair. 

S.  B.  G. 

June  38,  1919 


Vll 


CONTENTS 
PART  ONE 

PAGE 

I.    A  LOVER  OF  THE  CHAIR       ......  i 

II.    CHAIR  AND  SADDLE        .      .      .      .   f  .      .  28 

III.  A  LIBERAL  EXPERIENCE 43 

IV.  A  MODERN  PARADOX 90 

V.    IN  PURSUIT  OF  THE  ARTS 142 

I.  CUDGELS  AND  COMMON  SENSE   .    .  143 

II.  SENSE  AND  THE  SOUL   .    .    .    .  153 

III.  ART  AND  THE  REASONERS   .    .    .  167 

rv.    MADAME'S  TASTE 179 

PART  TWO 

I.    POOR  RICHARD 209 

II.    THE  AWKWARD  AGE 232 

III.    PSEUDODOXIA  EPIDEMIC  A 255 

IV.    IN  QUEST  OF  THE  CENTER 272 


IX 


A  LOVER  OF   THE   CHAIR 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair 


ONCE  over  the  border  of  a  stormy  youth  —  the 
wrong  border,  alas,  he  was  none  the  less  in 
clined  to  say  —  he  felt  a  curious  serenity  of  spirit, 
which  gave  him  for  a  brief  searching  birthday  a  dis 
turbing  qualm.  It  came  over  him  suddenly  that  his 
present  restful  content  was  the  sign  of  approaching 
age.  He  was  concerned  that  he  was  not  more  con 
cerned  about  certain  losses  that  those  storms  had 
involved  him  in  —  certain  shores  that  they  had 
beaten  him  back  from.  They  had  driven  him  far 
enough  about,  sometimes  into  ports  he  had  little 
pride  in  remembering.  But  he  was  out  of  it  now, 
he  told  himself.  His  youth  was  over,  he  was  as  he 
was,  and  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  take  him 
self  so.  He  could  settle  back  upon  an  ironic  survey 
of  life  and  find  a  pleasant  spice  hi  his  aloof  con 
tentment. 

Whatever  the  quality  of  his  aloofness,  his  irony 
was  real  enough  to  flash  back  upon  himself;  and 
presently  he  found  it  smiling  with  the  perception  that 
his  losses  were  being  accorded  more  than  a  scornful 
hearing,  and  being  dismissed  with  but  a  feminine  no. 
The  occasional  flashes  of  old  moods  that  now  after 
a  long  period  came  back  upon  him  were  making  him 


2  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

linger  over  the  sense  that  there  were  starry  parts  of 
the  common  life  that  had  slipped  by  him  and  left 
him  untouched.  He  had  the  spirit,  however,  to 
combat  his  regrets,  and  he  settled  back  not  uncom 
fortably  upon  the  serenity  of  his  new-found  leisure. 

He  had  the  materials  for  contentment.  There 
were  inbred  habits  of  simplicity,  and  the  thrill  of 
adventure  in  expenditure  that  are  essential  to  wring 
ing  luxury  from  any  income,  and  can  wring  it  from 
any;  and  a  taste  that  could  find  its  pleasure  in 
lining  his  study  with  books  and  brooding  among 
them  buried  in  one  and  at  arm's  length  from  the  rest. 
He  had  toned  his  library  with  the  deep  oranges  and 
browns  that  bound  his  present  to  certain  serene 
years  of  his  childhood  and  overleaped  the  interval 
of  troubled  youth.  There  was  enough  of  an  income 
to  give  him  travel  when  he  cared  for  it.  There  was, 
perhaps  above  all,  the  rich  heritage  of  an  improvi 
dent  family  —  an  unconcern  for  a  possible  rainy 
day.  Add  to  all  this  a  habit  of  detachment  that 
left  him  free  to  meet  the  present  humor  for  humor 
and  his  equipment  for  content  was  reasonably  com 
plete. 

He  had  indeed  some  mental  reservations  as  to 
this  humor  of  his.  He  knew  that  it  had  little  out 
ward  wit  to  match  the  subtlety  of  his  inner  percep 
tions  of  the  foibles  and  inconsistencies  of  his  own 
and  others'  dancing  to  the  spasmodic  tune  of  life. 
And  he  saw  in  this  lack  of  explicit  wit  the  explana 
tion  of  a  characteristic  of  his  —  the  fewness  and  in 
tensity  of  his  friendships.  For  with  perhaps  less 
than  the  normal  ability  to  flash  out  the  quality  of 
his  perceptions,  he  could  reveal  himself  only  to  the 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  3 

rare  and  old  acquaintances  whose  outlook  was 
enough  like  his  own  to  make  a  word  or  an  allusion 
carry  the  quality  of  his  thought.  With  more  ex 
pressiveness  he  could  have  won  a  more  universal 
response,  and  would  have  been  no  doubt  content  with 
less  delicately  appreciative  ears.  As  it  was,  he  put 
a  value  upon  the  friends  he  had  that  was  the  greater 
for  their  necessarily  deeper  thrust. 

It  was  the  quality  of  his  humor,  however,  that 
it  could  be  amused  at  his  own  foibles,  and  thus,  as 
he  could  smile  to  observe,  it  was  rarely  likely  to  be 
graveled  for  matter.  It  served,  at  least,  its  inner 
purpose  with  him  in  keeping  his  temper  unsoured, 
in  relieving  the  somberness  of  reflection,  and  of 
keeping  him  amused  at  the  spectacle  of  a  life  that 
seemed  to  him  none  too  heartening  in  itself. 

All  in  all  he  prized  the  fortune  that  had  brought 
him  to  his  present  station.  It  gave  him  a  compe 
tence  with  leisure,  work  that  he  could  look  upon  as 
of  decent  importance,  and  an  attitude  to  life  that 
commanded  as  well  as  permitted  his  indulgence  in 
the  kind  of  exercise  for  which  leisure  is  the  con 
venient  term. 

He  paid  for  this  fortune,  indeed,  by  a  seclusion 
that  at  moments,  in  late  afternoons  when  the  sun 
fell  warmly  upon  the  deepening  colors  of  his  li 
brary,  or  in  winter  when  the  lights  were  lit  before 
the  dinner  hour  called  him  away  to  bleak  boarding 
houses  —  a  seclusion  that  at  such  moments  mounted 
to  a  poignant  loneliness.  Tactful  suggestions  had 
come  to  him  from  time  to  time  that  there  was  a 
common  mode  of  relief  from  such  a  state.  But  he 
had  what  comfort  there  was  in  the  reflection  that 


4  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

this  normal  escape  from  loneliness  was  prohibited 
as  much  by  the  meagerness  of  his  income  as  by  its 
incompatibility  with  the  humorous  detachment  that 
he  so  prized.  The  soldier,  the  priest,  and  the  scholar 
—  he  knew  the  ancient  wisdom. 

He  had  an  amused  outlook  about  him  over  the 
devastations  that  this  escape  had  entailed  upon  some 
of  his  colleagues  —  the  addition  of  domestic  duties 
that  were  sometimes  more  than  Omphalean  in  their 
indignity,  the  addition  of  domestic  membership  that 
promised  crying  distractions  for  years  to  come,  the 
addition  of  expenses  that  superinduced  pot-boiling 
and  politics  —  the  entrance  of  the  personal  equation 
destructive  of  scholarly  calm  and  productive  of  the 
multiplex  irrelevant  motives  that  made  futile  so 
much  of  the  life  about  him. 

He  knew,  indeed,  that  he  was  open  to  the  charge 
of  selfishness,  and  he  squirmed  at  the  accusation. 
For  he  had  the  sentiment  to  be  touched  and  won  by 
the  spectacle  that  took  place  courageously,  now 
among  his  friends  and  now  more  remotely  in  some 
romance  that  fell  under  his  eye,  of  a  brave  launch 
ing  out  into  the  double  struggle.  But  he  knew  that 
the  life  that  he  proposed  to  himself  was  not  to  be 
one  of  ease,  and  that  however  poor  a  performer  he 
was  to  be,  it  was,  generically,  to  be  performed  the 
better  alone.  !  ^ 

As  for  the  lyric  aspect  of  the  matter  he  had  his 
reserves  there  too;  and  though  he  could  smile  at  a 
touch  of  pedantry  in  his  necessarily  aloof  point  of 
view,  he  had  the  rational  assurance  of  common 
sense  that  the  aloof  point  of  view  was  probably  the 
saner  —  that  the  mad  themselves  were  not  the  best 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  5 

judges  of  madness.  His  own  observations  had  made 
him  suspect  a  certain  sentimental  falseness  in  the 
reputed  attitude  of  all  the  world  toward  the  concrete 
instance  of  the  malady  —  certainly  of  the  masculine 
part  of  it  at  all  events.  The  instinct  to  hide  the 
emotion,  increasingly  strong  the  richer  the  nature, 
rather  suggested  the  older  classic  view  of  love  as  a 
sickness  to  be  suffered  in  patience,  a<  walking  fever 
to  be  endured  in  as  much  silence  as  a  resolute  manli 
ness  could  command  —  not  a  thing  to  be  courted 
and  fostered.  And  as  he  looked  back  upon  a  cen 
tury  that  in  its  literature  and  in  its  current  interpre 
tation  of  life  had  lifted  love  to  the  highest  place,  he 
was  struck  with  the  spectacle  of  an  almost  unprece 
dented  bankruptcy.  The  age  that  had  apotheosized 
love  was  ending  vulgarly  as  an  age  of  divorce. 

For  all  his  smiles,  and  his  perceptions,  and  his 
rationalizations,  however,  the  sense  that  his  youth 
had  slipped  by,  often  in  futile  experiences  that  he 
might  better  have  missed  altogether,  and  that  he 
had  missed  this  one  experience,  was  a  matter  of 
underlying  regret.  However  much  a  malady  it  might 
be,  and  however  bitter  its  endurance,  still  it  was  too 
universally  human  to  let  him  be  normal  in  so  wholly 
escaping  it.  His  understanding  of  life  was  by  so 
much  the  less  complete,  for  though  he  had  felt  the 
vicarious  passions  of  literature,  he  knew  enough  of 
the  comparative  paleness  of  literature  even  at  its 
best  to  realize  its  insufficiency  alone.  And  there 
was  too,  in  his  exemption,  the  lurking  suspicion  of 
something  deficient  in  his  own  make-up,  a  suspicion 
more  disconcerting  than  the  mere  escape  from  the 
external  experience. 


6  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

It  was  therefore  with  a  curiously  complex  con 
sciousness  that  he  found  himself,  after  a  slow  in 
duction,  wholly  enmeshed.  He  had  at  first  a  more 
than  ordinarily  objective  view  of  his  own  impulses, 
and  a  perception  that  found  some  of  its  actual  en 
joyment  in  the  spectacle  of  his  own  foible.  He  had 
a  rational  idea  of  the  place  of  this  passion  in  the 
half-conflicting,  half-cooperating  schemes  of  nature 
on  the  one  hand  and  humanity  on  the  other.  But 
presently  this  idea  began  to  change  its  proportions. 
His  freedom  began  to  seem  less  supremely  desirable. 
The  malady  began  to  seem  an  unwonted  state  of 
health.  He  had  once  told  himself  that  he  had  all  the 
wisdom  about  love  except  a  knowledge  of  the  thing 
itself;  and  now  he  had  a  sudden  sense  of  the  vanity 
of  this  wisdom.  He  caught  his  own  downward  drift, 
and  warned  himself  in  amusement  how  desperately 
he  would  have  to  cling  to  his  pale  wisdom  to  keep 
him,  in  his  inexperience,  from  a  more  than  common 
donning  of  the  motley. 

In  the  beginning,  before  he  had  ceased  to  spend 
certain  moments  in  his  aloof  conning  tower,  he  was 
whimsically  dismayed  at  his  plight,  and  at  rebellious 
rejoicings  within  him  that  the  springs  of  his  sensi 
bilities  were  not  dried  up.  He  had  recently  had  an 
other  experience  that  had  thrilled  him  with  a  paral 
lel  though  necessarily  paler  satisfaction  —  he  had 
been  for  the  first  time  in  Italy.  He  might  have 
learned  from  that  that  his  sentiment  was  still  quite 
capable  of  tears. 

He  had  gone  reluctantly,  and  with  misgivings,  for 
Italy  had  been  the  Arcadia  of  his  dreams,  and  he 
had  known,  in  other  spots  less  tenderly  cherished 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  7 

but  still  looked  forward  to  with  hope,  the  chill  of 
disillusionment  on  the  spots  themselves.  He  had 
paid  before  the  penalty  of  too  vivid  a  prefiguring  and 
too  keen  an  anticipation.  Even  Paris,  wrapped  in 
its  magic  past,  and  appealing,  through  a  hundred 
avenues  of  approach,  to  his  idea,  composite  of  scenes 
and  personages  and  dreams  and  hopes  and  accom 
plishments  of  the  luminous  moments  of  many  cen 
turies —  even  Paris  itself  in  the  reality  had  stood 
between  him  and  his  vision.  He  had  indeed,  in 
repeated  visits,  learned  to  see,  beneath  the  cloak  of 
its  modern  instantaneity,  the  Paris  of  his  idea  — 
even  to  see  in  the  cloak  itself,  with  its  stains  and 
its  dinginess  of  daily  wear,  something  of  the  eternal 
vitality  which  scorned  his  too  aesthetic  demand  that 
it  be  laid  away  for  him  in  lavender.  None  the  less 
he  had  had  to  let  custom  stale  and  obliterate  much 
of  the  ephemeral  before  the  real  Paris  had  emerged; 
and  by  then  the  first  thrill  of  perception  had  passed 
—  passed  into  something  more  substantial  no  doubt, 
but  too  completely  passed  ever  to  command  a  per 
fect  moment  of  rapture. 

He  had  thrust  off  Italy,  therefore,  into  the  vague 
future,  hesitant  to  put  it  to  the  touch.  It  was  for 
him  a  state  of  mind  peculiarly  luminous,  a  clear  and 
simple  vision  to  which  he  had  clung  with  whimsical 
hope,  a  bright  limbo  of  soft  skies,  an  aged  earth  still 
fresh  with  verdure,  hillsides  terraced  and  vine-clad, 
molded  by  ages  of  cultivation,  ruins  crumbling  back 
into  the  welcoming  soil,  old  gardens  with  marble 
balustrades  and  statues  mellowing  to  their  ancient 
kinship  with  the  earth,  a  people  humane  of  the 
South,  looking  at  him  through  eyes  saddened  with 


8  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

the  reminiscence  of  old  centuries  —  a  land  where 
human  experience  had  risen  to  the  highest  and  left 
its  mark  deepcut  but  harmonious  upon  a  still  domi 
nant  nature.  And  he  had  wanted  to  save  this  lu 
minous  corner  of  his  mind  from  the  disappointing 
touch  of  reality,  fearful  lest  he,  unlike  those  others 
whose  susceptibility  still  kept  their  spirits  fresh, 
should  prove  his  lyric  vein  grown  dry  with  the  prose 
of  his  reason. 

When  he  did  enter  upon  it,  it  was  almost  by  acci 
dent.  He  had  come  afoot,  with  staff  and  pack  and 
a  good  companion,  from  the  homely  Tyrol,  Teutonic 
in  its  gross  beverages,  its  broken-kneed  crucifixes, 
its  flesh,  its  comfort,  its  frank  coarseness.  And  he 
found  himself,  after  a  loitering  week,  at  the  head  of 
the  Engadin.  Forgetting  to  be  charmed  he  had  been 
charmed,  in  a  lingering  sunset  after  a  day  of  storm, 
by  the  beauty  of  the  Silser  See,  cloud  mass  and 
mountain  mass  in  the  sunset  towering  upward  and 
downward  from  its  clear  surface.  The  emotion  of 
the  moment  had  broken  the  intransigence  of  his 
resolve;  and  in  the  waywardness  of  his  travel  it  was 
an  added  adventure  to  decide  in  the  whim  of  a  mo 
ment's  desire  to  turn  toward  Italy  instead  of  back 
ward  to  the  North. 

The  point  of  their  decision,  when  they  came  to 
the  real  moment  of  divergence,  embodied  itself  pro 
phetically  in  the  view  that  stretched  behind  and  be 
fore  them  on  the  next  morning  from  the  top  of  the 
pass.  Behind,  in  the  valley  of  the  Inn,  the  lake,  the 
mountains,  the  whole  region  of  their  Teutonic  pil 
grimage,  and  in  their  minds  the  whole  past  of  their 
Teutonic  reminiscences,  lay  in  heavy  fog,  obscure, 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  9 

forbidding,  chilling.  And  before  them,  down  the 
long  defile  of  the  Val  Bregaglia,  the  uplifting  snowy 
peaks,  the  green  lower  slopes,  the  winding  thread  of 
the  stream  strung  with  gleaming  villages,  lay  warm 
in  the  Sunshine  beneath  a  clear,  hopeful  sky  drifting 
with  headlong  clouds.  The  spell  fell  upon  them 
there,  and  they  knew  it,  and  it  still  held  them. 

They  had  indeed  but  a  touch  of  Italy,  but  they 
had  it  on  the  intimate  terms  of  the  foot  traveler. 
Their  knapsacks,  that  elsewhere  had  been  the  in 
signia  of  leisure,  here  seemed  to  put  them  in  friendly 
touch  with  the  workaday  life  of  the  valley  —  with  a 
similarly  harnessed  population,  men  and  women, 
children  of  ten  and  age-bent  elders,  hewers  of  wood 
and  drawers  of  water,  hay-harvesters  and  peddlers 
—  many  a  gay-tongued  Autolycus,  and  one  young 
girl,  wearied  and  resting  by 'her  pack,  whose  face 
long  afterwards  haunted  them  with  its  sadness  and 
its  beauty.  It  was  indeed  the  inveterate  world  of 
their  old  knowledge,  a  world  of  hard  toil,  of  meager 
rewards,  of  a  life  hard-wrung  from  a  reluctant  earth. 
But  it  was  a  world  transmuted.  Its  thousand  times 
repeated  Buon  giorno,  Buona  sera,  from  singing 
children  and  from  warped  and  wrinkled  age,  touched 
their  common  humanity;  and  the  earth  itself,  in 
stinct  with  the  accumulated  life  of  all  their  tradi 
tions  and  all  their  civilization,  spoke  to  them  on 
every  hand  no  less  tenderly  and  no  less  humanly. 

They  knew  afterwards  how  merely  scenically  they 
had  taken  their  first  day  as  they  plodded  down  the 
long  incline  of  the  valley  —  the  white  villages 
crowded  upon  the  narrow  cobbled  street,  the  drowsy 
tinkle  of  the  scythe  sharpeners  seated  by  the  open 


io  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

doors,  the  hamlets  high  up  the  mountainsides  — 
houses  huddled  like  sheep  around  their  shepherd 
churches  —  other  hamlets  still  higher  up  on  slopes 
that  seemed  inaccessible,  and  higher  yet  still  other 
hamlets  to  the  very  edge  of  the  summer  snows  — 
terraces  of  vines,  terraces  of  short  hay  under  the 
low  branches  of  chestnut  groves  —  deep  shady  vistas 
where  the  scythe  and  the  bent  mower  forever  reaped 
the  scant  harvest  —  wayside  shrines  that  harbored 
here  no  broken-kneed  Christs,  but  where  the  tender 
Virgin  won  an  unremitting  homage  of  simple  flowers 
—  stretches  of  old  Roman  roadway,  and  medieval 
ruins,  and  the  swarming  albergo,  there  at  once  side 
by  side  without  clash,  harmonious,  in  the  presence 
of  a  life  so  simple  and  so  unaltering  that  Virgil  and 
St.  Francis  might  have  passed  that  way  with  them 
unshocked  by  change. 

They  had  taken  it  all  with  the  objective,  welcom 
ing  eyes  of  travelers;  but  they  had  been  moved,  and 
the  spell  of  Italy,  drawing  from  their  sense  of  the 
past  and  their  vision  of  the  present,  had  fallen  upon 
them  and  taken  them  captive.  For  one  of  these 
travelers,  at  least,  with  his  fears  and  his  hopes,  the 
pilgrimage  was  doubly  endeared.  He  was  exultant 
that  the  springs  of  his  sensibilities  were  not  wholly 
dried  up;  and  he  found  himself  dangerously  making 
an  attempt  to  adjust  more  leniently  within  him  the 
momentous  proportions  of  his  reason  and  his  heart. 

So  that  now,  when  he  saw  himself  ensnared  in  a 
new  and  deeper  emotion,  he  was  complexly  but  the 
more  guarded  against  its  mastery  as  he  found  him 
self  the  more  inclined  to  indulge  and  test  the  new 
depths  of  his  spontaneity.  His  conscious  dualism 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  n 

never  left  him,  however  —  never  so  wholly  that  he 
could  think  of  himself,  after  the  manner  of  the 
world's  beloved,  as  foregoing  principles,  ambitions, 
and  native  tastes  as  the  price  of  attainment.  And 
he  kept,  even  in  the  moments  of  stress,  enough  of  his 
objective  humor  to  detect  and  smile  back  the  un 
conscious  egotisms  of  the  lover  in  him. 

He  would  have  doubted,  indeed,  the  probability  of 
his  being  really  in  love  had  there  not  come  upon  him 
a  vivid  light  that  had  never  before  illuminated  his 
perceptions  even  in  imagination,  even  in  moments 
of  transcendent  emotion.  Long  ago  he  had  had  di 
verse  experiences  that  had  set  him  ruminating  on  his 
attachment  to  life.  He  had  come  near  enough  to 
death  more  than  once  in  perils  by  sea  and  land  to 
know  that  his  physical  clinging  to  life  was  a  dif 
ferent  thing  from  his  conscious  sense  of  attachment 
to  it.  As  for  his  conscious  attachment,  his  ultimate 
findings  came  to  him,  as  he  might  have  anticipated, 
not  out  of  his  reason  but  out  of  experience  and  an 
intuition  sensitive  to  the  subtle  imagery  of  emotion. 

One  of  the  friends  who  had  given  to  his  college 
life  the  principal  value  that  it  had  had  for  him,  and 
who  had  shared  with  him  a  year  of  prodigal  wander 
ings,  had  afterwards  gone  away  in  search  of  health, 
and  then  died.  For  five  or  six  vital  years  they  had 
been  together,  conscious  together  of  what  had  been 
significant  to  each,  filled  with  common  tastes,  often 
differing  in  opinion,  but  with  a  common  vocabulary 
and  a  common  understanding  —  phrases  that  meant 
philosophies,  gestures  that  meant  attitudes  to  life, 
smiles  that  summarized  old  experiences  and  old 
readings,  a  rapport  that  included  the  whole  of  the 


12  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

structure  that  each  in  that  period  had  built,  in  his 
consciousness,  of  life  as  he  knew  it. 

In  the  bleak  period  that  had  followed  the  first 
departure,  he  had  wandered  through  the  empty 
rooms  of  that  house  of  friendship  desolately  enough, 
yet  forlornly  comforted  with  the  sense  that  still, 
though  from  a  distance  and  with  only  a  word  now 
and  then  to  break  the  loneliness,  his  habitation  there 
was  still  shared.  Hope  kept  those  rooms  habitable 
for  lingering  months.  But  when  the  end  came,  and 
the  first  hot  grief  had  burnt  to  ashes,  he  knew  that 
death  had  forever  locked  those  doors.  No  one  else 
could  enter  there,  and  the  part  they  had  built  to 
gether,  detail  by  detail,  he  himself  could  never  live 
in  again.  New  parts  he  could  build,  he  knew,  if  he 
should  have  the  heart,  but  the  years  of  his  old  build 
ing  were  gone,  and  the  completed  structure  of  his 
life  would  forever  be  the  less  for  the  closing  of  those 
silent  chambers. 

It  was  the  way  of  life,  he  knew.  And  in  the  deso 
late  reflections  that  followed  he  knew  that  the  con 
scious  attachment  to  life  lay,  negatively,  in  an 
escape  from  an  utter  detachment,  from  isolation; 
and  positively,  in  a  sense  that  the  intangible  struc 
ture  of  life  as  he  grasped  it  was  shared  with  someone 
whose  sympathy  and  understanding  could  confirm 
it,  and  rescue  it  from  the  haunting  suspicion  of 
nothingness. 

He  had  secluded  himself  for  a  time,  disheartened. 
To  begin  anew,  to  build  again,  was  more  than  he 
could  bring  himself  to  at  once.  He  had  no  wish  for 
other  friends.  He  found  indeed  that  it  was  not  in 
him  to  hunt  them  out,  to  choose  and  cultivate  them. 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  13 

His  turn  of  mind,  the  quality  of  his  appreciations, 
made  a  demand  upon  circumstances  that  if  he  have 
friendship  it  must  grow  organically  from  the  process 
of  life.  Nothing  else  could  produce  what  he  under 
stood  by  that  term.  He  had  no  care  for  casual  ac 
quaintance.  He  had,  however,  the  solace  that  comes 
nearest  to  friendship  —  he -had  books;  and  with 
them  he  spent  his  time  for  a  year  or  two.  And  then 
he  found,  growing  out  of  the  new  life  he  had  made 
for  himself,  the  beginning  of  new  friendships.  Liv 
ing  again  had  zest  for  him.  This  led  him  into  franker 
and  fuller  associations,  and  these  in  turn  to  his  curi 
ously  eventless  romance. 

The  girl  who  fanned  the  sudden  flame  in  him  was, 
he  knew  at  once,  disconcertingly  unlike  the  type  of 
women  who  in  lonely  moments  had  peopled  his 
fancy.  They  had  been  calm-mannered  and  friendly, 
vital  but  contained.  They  had  not  been  clever,  per 
haps,  but  had  grown  up  with  ripe  traditions  into 
whose  ways  they  had  richly  fallen.  In  their  pleasant 
and  wholesome  benevolence  they  had  been,  above 
all,  restful  and  serene,  with  a  frank  and  tender 
humor,  a  refuge  from  life  and  from  a  troubled  spirit. 

The  girl  herself  was  wholly  otherwise.  He  first 
met  her  in  the  drawing  room  of  acquaintances 
whither  he  had  gone  to  make  a  rare  call.  There  was 
a  silence  when  he  entered,  not  embarrassed  but  in 
tense,  as  though  he  had  come  upon  a  moment  of 
strong  feeling  in  which,  though  he  took  no  part,  his 
presence  struck  no  discordant  note.  He  was  intro 
duced  to  her  then,  simply;  and  in  the  high  tension 
of  her  clear  regard,  in  her  elevation  above  the  com 
monplace,  he  caught  a  wistful  appeal  in  her  inquir- 


14  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

ing  eyes.  He  did  not  know  to  what  impassioned 
question  he  was  responding  or  to  what  doctrine  he 
was  assenting.  He  only  saw  her  there,  very  young 
and  very  slender  and  very  erect,  her  head  quiveringly 
high,  her  eyes  burning  with  indignant  wonder,  her 
color  very  pure  and  heightened  with  emotion,  and 
her  thoughts  lifted  above  the  conventions  of  the 
moment.  His  blood  leapt,  without  asking  leave  and 
without  giving  reasons. 

He  had  no  word  with  her  then,  except  her  look 
of  baffled  inquiry  too  impersonal  he  thought  to  have 
distinguished  him;  and  yet  in  his  unchallenged  ad 
mission  into  the  circle  of  her  feelings  he  nourished 
a  hopeful  interpretation  against  the  waiting  smile  of 
his  later  reflections.  He  put  off  impatiently  the 
mocking  intrusion  of  those  reflections,  and  listened, 
when  she  had  gone  quietly  and  without  apology  from 
the  room,  to  the  explanations  of  his  friends.  She 
had  been  reading,  they  said  with  a  lightness  that 
had  no  flippancy,  some  of  those  modern  writers  who 
had  discovered  that  life  was  hard,  and  harder  for 
some  than  for  others.  And  she  had  gone  out  to  see 
for  herself.  What  she  had  looked  for  had  not  been 
hard  to  find,  real  and  heart-rending.  At  the  end 
of  her  endurance  she  had  come  upon  a  pitiful  case 
of  ejection,  squalid  household  goods  crying  their 
shame  at  the  curbstone,  a  drunken  father,  a  sad, 
starved  mother  nursing  a  baby  at  her  flat  breast,  and 
half-clad,  dirty  children  shivering  about  her.  It  was 
a  typical  case,  they  said,  as  they  sat  in  the  comfort 
able  drawing  room  before  the  blazing  fire;  and  they 
looked  at  each  other  wretchedly  and  in  silence, 
moved  by  the  pure  young  sympathies  of  the  girl,  her 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  15 

generous  indignation,  the  revival  of  old  feelings  and 
old  problems,  and  the  reminder  of  old  wounds  that 
had  never  healed. 

He  went  away  troubled,  his  quickened  pulse  at 
the  thought  of  the  clear  generous  eyes  of  the  girl 
rebuked  by  the  unselfish  wistfulness  of  her  emotion. 
His  mind  moved  along  sudden  unwonted  paths. 
Bright  visions  flashed  out  upon  him.  But  he  told 
himself  pityingly  that  he  was  too  old.  He  had 
struggled  with  the  horror  of  that  experience  that 
had  now  so  suddenly  blighted  the  joy  of  her  normal 
girlhood,  and  he  had  come  out  of  the  struggle,  not 
on  the  side  of  youth  and  hope  and  ardor  and  gen 
erosity,  and  of  confidence  that  he  could  take  the 
world  in  his  two  eager  hands  and  shape  it  anew  in 
some  less  hateful  mold.  He  had  come  out,  alas,  on 
the  side  of  middle  age,  less  hopeful,  less  eager,  in 
the  measure  of  his  despair;  and  now  as  he  looked 
back  on  the  years  since  his  Utopia  had  faded  for 
him,  he  knew  that  in  the  vision  of  ardent  youth,  with 
the  sight  of  the  world's  misery  before  its  eyes,  he 
must  be  accounted  by  so  much  the  less  generous. 
He  was  spending  his  years  among  books,  in  the 
pleasant  warmth  of  his  study,  shut  off  from  the 
sight  of  suffering  in  the  elegant  pursuit  of  learning, 
or  looking  at  it  in  strange  foreign  cities,  in  Italian 
countrysides,  in  gaunt  fishing  villages  on  desolate 
French  coasts,  with  the  curious,  objective,  aloof, 
picture-hunting  eyes  of  the  traveler.  With  the 
friends  he  had  left  but  now  he  had  talked  of  this 
problem,  trying  against  the  incessant  pressure  of  the 
age  to  keep  clear  the  point  of  view  that  he  had 
gained.  He  knew  that  whatever  the  evils  of  life, 


1 6  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

not  sympathy  alone  could  better  them;  that  learn 
ing  and  thought  must  have  their  silent  place  in  the 
regenerative  forces  that  should  bring  about  a  bet 
ter  future.  And  he  had  committed  himself  to  the 
latter  forces. 

He  went  away  from  his  friends  glooming  among 
his  own  reflections.  His  humor  deserted  him.  The 
little  personal  charities  that  he  had  sneakingly 
maintained  against  the  wisdom  of  his  organizing  age 
suddenly  looked  paltry  and  feeble  in  the  face  of 
that  sweeping  grasp  which  the  young  hopes  of  the 
new  generation  seemed  to  have  attained.  They 
rose  up  and  mocked  him.  And  when  at  the  door  of 
his  own  chambers  he  passed  the  humble  figure  of 
an  old  pensioner  of  his,  he  strode  in  without  a 
smile  of  recognition  and  slammed  the  door.  He  was 
down  with  the  malady. 

Seated  by  his  window  he  looked  afresh  at  the 
problem  from  the  point  of  view  he  had  won  in  his 
old  wrestling  with  it.  Surely  for  that  less  cruel 
future  toward  which  the  present  was  aiming  there 
must  be  saved  what  good  things  had  been  accumu 
lated  in  the  past;1  old  traditions  must  go  on,  the  love 
of  art,  the  love  of  books,  the  love  of  wisdom;  the 
human  chain  must  remain  unbroken ;  the  torch  must 
be  kept  alight  and  handed  on. 

How  trite  it  all  sounded!  To  what  feeble  phrases, 
now  suddenly,  he  was  reduced,  as  he  came  again  to 
view  the  problem  from  the  ardent  angle  of  youth  and 
generosity,  and  illusion,  and  hope!  He  saw  it  all 
anew  out  of  the  dreaming  eyes  of  girlhood  —  and  it 
struck  him  how  drab  and  wintry  were  the  colors  of 
his  own  vision.  His  own  vision  assumed  all  at  once 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  17 

a  dwindling  remoteness.  It  lacked  the  warm,  heart 
ening  touch  of  immediacy,  the  quickening  contact  of 
life.  He  seemed  to  be  trying,  from  aloof,  and  with 
averted  eyes,  to  do  what  only  a  direct  vision  and 
courageous  bodily  presence  could  hope  to  do.  And 
he  saw  embodied  in  this  girl  the  spirit  of  a  new  age, 
with  eyes  open,  with  quick  sympathy,  touching  the 
wound  with  its  own  hands,  devoting  itself  to  the  heal 
ing  service.  Every  instinct  in  him  tugged  at  his 
assent  to  this  call  of  life. 

He  sat  on  in  his  window,  ruminating  in  gloomy 
rebellion.  Why  he  should  thus  twist  the  fancies  that 
a  fair  face  had  set  free  in  him  into  a  grotesque  pic 
ture  of  despair  he  had  not,  for  the  hour,  the  humor 
even  to  question.  It  was  indeed  a  rebellion  against 
growing  up,  a  crying  out  against  the  years,  an  old 
ember  of  his  youth  that  had  not  gone  out,  glowing 
through  the  ashes  it  had  been  buried  among.  But 
he  had  lost  his  detachment,  his  perspective,  his 
humor;  and  the  particular  circumstance  of  the  mo 
ment  absorbed  and  embodied  the  universal  protest 
—  keen  in  him,  for  he  loved  the  human  aspects  of 
life  —  against  the  hardening  changes  of  maturity. 

He  went  on  savagely  reflecting.  He  knew  the  in 
transigence  of  youth,  and  the  hardness  of  its  gen 
erosity.  And  besides  she  was  a  woman.  There 
came  into  his  mind  a  sally  of  an  old  humanist  —  La 
Bruyere —  which  he  knew  to  be  true  to  his  own 
observation  —  that  women  cared  nothing  for  the 
past.  They  did  care  nothing  for  it  —  nothing  for 
the  slow  structure  of  accumulating  wisdom  built 
upon  the  experience  of  peoples  and  ages  that  were 
gone.  There  were  almost  no  women  historians,  al- 


1 8  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

most  no  women  philosophers,  almost  no  women  hu 
manists,  though  there  were  women  poets  and  women 
novelists  in  profusion,  and  a  growing  body  of  women 
scientists,  business  women,  and  soon  perhaps  of 
politicians.  Their  concern  was  with  the  present  and 
the  immediate  and  the  expedient.  Their  sensitive 
sympathies,  touched  quickly  with  the  present  reality, 
did  much  to  mollify  and  humanize  and  warm  a  life 
left  cold  by  the  remoter  rational  dreams  of  men. 

He  laughed  aloud,  mirthlessly,  at  the  fine  sweep 
of  his  generalization.  But  it  seemed  to  him  true, 
true  in  the  large,  though  he  saw  in  the  situation 
about  him  that  many  men  were  throwing  over  their 
own  for  the  feminine  standard,  were  giving  up  their 
concern  for  the  large  vision  of  the  past,  and  were 
substituting  in  human  affairs  the  criterion  of  spon 
taneous  sympathy,  for  that  of  a  wisdom  broadly 
founded  on  the  most  significant  of  human  experience. 

He  rose  and  strode  across  the  room.  With  the 
change  of  position  there  came  into  his  mind  the 
picture  of  the  old  man  who  had  been  hanging  about 
the  entry  when  he  had  come  in.  The  pathos  of 
that  patient  figure,  and  the  recollection  that  he  had 
passed  him  by  without  a  word  or  a  glance,  smote 
him  and  brought  moisture  to  his  eyes.  A  sudden 
sympathy,  such  as  he  had  never  felt  even  when  he 
had  been  most  kind,  suffused  him,  and  snatching  his 
hat  and  coat  he  went  out  to  look  for  the  old  pen 
sioner.  The  empty  passage  filled  him  with  remorse, 
and  sent  him  off  to  the  poor  rooms  where  the  aged 
man  lived.  Clearly  he  was  down  with  the  malady. 

The  relief  of  action  gave  a  new  turn  to  his  inner 
conflict.  In  the  days  that  followed,  a  surging  hope 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  19 

sang  in  his  heart,  and  in  leisure  hours  sent  him  wan 
dering  away  from  the  populous  streets  to  the  bare 
wintry  stretches  of  the  park.  Now  for  the  first  time 
in  years  he  felt  the  thrill  of  kinship  with  the  natural 
things  that  he  had  latterly  shut  himself  away  from. 
His  eyes  found  a  sudden  pleasure  in  the  intricate 
pattern  of  the  twigs  against  the  sky.  The  pale 
purity  of  the  blue  background  caught  a  response  in 
him  that  enriched  the  pleasure  of  his  present  per 
ceptions  with  a  resurgence  of  his  childhood's  love 
of  color.  He  heard  the  thin  minor  pipe  of  a  bird's 
winter  song  high  up  among  the  branches.  Without 
his  knowing  why  at  first,  nature  was  become  thrill- 
ingly  vital.  Then  he  knew  with  a  kind  of  shame 
that  it  was  because  of  an  absurd  illusion.  He  seemed 
to  be  sharing  his  perceptions  —  hearing  through 
other  ears,  seeing  through  other  eyes,  silently  vol 
uble  the  while  to  an  invisible  companion  at  his  side 
in  unutterable  communion  of  the  primal  intuitions 
that  lay  at  the  bottom  of  his  consciousness  —  colors, 
and  sounds,  and  forms,  and  odors,  the  feel  of  the 
breeze  on  his  cheek,  of  vigor  in  his  blood,  of  ardor  in 
his  spirit,  of  beauty  in  external  things,  and  of  in 
expressible  emotions. 

It  was  the  old  and  endeared  story  of  his  friend 
ship,  but  with  this  difference  —  that  it  was  no  shar 
ing  of  the  conscious  structure  of  the  part  of  life 
builded  together  and  lived  in  common,  but  the  sud 
den  mystic  hope,  the  semblance,  the  illusion,  he 
could  not  have  said,  of  sharing  in  that  region  from 
whose  vague  depths  surged  up  the  quickening  in 
tuitions  that  are  the  essence  of  life  itself.  His  ele 
mental  perceptions  brightened  vividly,  visibly,  with 


2O  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

the  sense  of  that  response.  He  knew  now  in  the 
aloof  and  ironic  half  of  his  consciousness  the  mean 
ing  of  what  the  vulgar  and  the  cultivated  alike  were 
reduced  to  calling  love  at  first  sight.  There  were 
moments  when  he  felt  ashamed,  now  that  he  was 
face  to  face  with  that  part  of  his  common  humanity 
which  he  had  so  long  suppressed.  Yet  there  it  was. 
And  if  it  had  come  to  him  suddenly,  lovers  obviously 
needed  no  long  experience  in  common;  they  had  all 
the  mystery  of  life  in  common.  They  might  indeed 
add  friendship  when  the  fresh  colors  of  the  illusion 
had  dulled,  but  in  itself  love  was  other  than  friend 
ship. 

He  knew  now  the  meaning  of  the  pregnant  silence 
of  lovers  — the  simple  language  of  proximity  —  for 
the  substance  of  their  communion  was  beyond  the 
reach  of  words.  It  was  a  commonplace  to  observe 
that  men  did  not  fall  in  love  with  cleverness,  with 
virtue,  with  taste,  with  ability,  with  any  of  the  cul 
tivated  qualities,  though  these  might  indeed  comfort 
the  conscience  of  the  pure  passion.  It  was  the  tem 
perament,  the  barbaric  and  unsubdued  nature,  flam 
ing  beneath  and  through  the  character,  that  set  the 
heart  astir  with  thrilling  illusions.  Cleopatra,  not 
Hypatia,  had  made  the  world's  great  love  story. 

As  he  saw  her  again  and  again  he  was  charmed 
with  the  accession  of  all  the  radiant,  inexpressive 
qualities  that  he  had  created  for  her  in  his  hours  of 
dreaming.  She  was  very  young,  scarcely  twenty, 
but  in  trying  to  place  her  by  recollecting  his  own 
state  of  mind  at  twenty  he  saw  that  he  had  no  clue 
to  her.  She  was  older  than  he  had  been,  and  though 
she  had  less  knowledge  and  less  experience  to  build 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  21 

upon,  her  simplicity  was  thus  the  less  far-reaching. 
It  was  piquant,  and  baffling,  and  competent.  She 
took  his  presence  with  frank  kindliness,  talked  with 
him  without  self-consciousness,  and  appealed  from 
her  ignorance  to  his  knowledge  with  an  open  sin 
cerity  that  smote  him  with  the  consciousness  of  his 
age.  None  the  less  it  was  captivating,  not  to  his 
vanity,  but  to  his  love  of  the  undisguised  nature  of 
her.  She  had  what  was  rare  in  his  experience  of 
women  —  a  way  of  saying  yes  and  no  firmly  and 
cfuickly,  with  her  mind  on  the  subject,  as  though 
there  were  no  impression  to  be  made  on  the  hearer, 
no  personal  matter  lurking  in  the  rear  in  danger  of 
compromise.  Her  manner  to  him  was  open  and 
ardent  with  her  own  vitality,  but  without  a  touch  of 
the  personal  that  he  had  come  to  think  of  as  the  dis 
tinguishing  feminine  trait. 

She  was,  he  came  to  believe,  of  the  new  order  — 
firm  of  tread,  of  strong  supple  hands,  and  with  a 
mind  turned  outward.  She  spoke  recurrently,  when 
they  met  again  and  again,  of  the  problem  that  her 
awakening  had  put  to  her  so  poignantly.  And  in  the 
vivid  strength  of  his  sympathetic  appreciation  of 
her,  his  heart  failed  him.  He  would  have  had  her  so 
little  otherwise.  Her  youth,  her  ardor,  her  hot  in 
dignation,  the  generous  reaction  of  her  enlarging 
spirit  in  its  first  hard  contact  with  an  inveterate 
world,  were  too  inherently  right.  Even  from  his  own 
older  point  of  view  the  alternative,  embodied  in  the 
young  women  about  them  too  absorbed  in  pleasure 
to  have  felt  the  pathos  of  life  outside  themselves, 
seemed  to  him  shallow  and  ignoble.  He  had  no  wish 
to  dull  the  fine  keenness  of  her  Utopian  dreams  with 


22  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

his  own  sense  of  the  hopelessness  of  her  hope.  If  she 
should  come  some  day  to  an  understanding  of  his 
vision,  it  must  be  won  by  way  of  the  path  she  had 
already  started  out  upon;  and  knowing  the  sanctions 
of  the  time,  and  remembering  the  slow  struggle  of 
his  own  solution,  and  realizing  that  she  was  a  woman, 
he  despaired  again.  His  heart  was  still  entangled 
with  his  brain. 

He  spun  for  her,  on  the  web  of  his  imagination, 
a  state  of  mind  serenely  impersonal,  objective,  and 
he  dared  not  trespass  upon  it  with  his  own  more  in 
timate  dream.  With  a  humor  that  did  little  to  soften 
the  bitterness  of  his  position  he  saw  the  touch  of  the 
ridiculous  in  his  reversal  of  traditional  relations  — 
that  it  was  he  whose  attitude  was  wholly  personal 
and  she  who  was  aloof  among  larger  concerns.  It 
was  no  relief  to  realize  that  it  was  he  who  was  ma 
ture  and  she  a  girl  hardly  on  the  threshold  of  woman 
hood. 

He  held  his  peace,  therefore,  and  lent  himself  to 
her  service  with  an  objective  friendliness  that  he 
despaired  of  altering.  He  saw  himself  with  a  sar 
donic  smile,  the  aloof  and  ironic  observer  of  men, 
dangling  forlornly  and  helplessly  after  a  girl,  no  dif 
ferently  from  other  poor  mortals  with  no  irony  in 
their  souls,  and  no  philosophy  in  their  outlook  upon 
life.  But  the  resolve  to  speak  and  put  an  end  to 
his  distraction,  formed  away  from  his  sight  of  her, 
melted  before  the  regard  of  her  frank  eyes  when 
they  met  again.  She  was  too  young,  and  too  simple, 
and  too  generous.  He  could  not  trouble  with  his 
passion  the  serenity  of  her  maidenly  spirit. 

With  despairing  clearness  he  saw  that  all  the 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  23 

qualities  on  which  he  was  wont  to  base  his  own  self- 
regard —  good  sense,  insight,  understanding  — 
added  nothing  to  his  intrinsic  worthiness  as  a  lover. 
In  a  sudden  accession  of  humility  he  felt  a  kind  of 
desecration  in  the  thought  that  love  should  first 
breathe  upon  her  unconscious  youth  from  his  own 
disillusioned  lips.  He  could  have  chosen  for  her 
some  radiant  youth  whose  lineaments,  he  realized 
with  a  whimsical  smile,  were  drawn  from  his  own 
picture  of  herself. 

One  day,  when  he  found  with  forlorn  amusement 
how  thick  the  sheaf  of  verses  had  grown  in  which  he 
had  relieved  the  enforced  silence  of  his  feelings,  he 
admitted  the  lover  in  himself  to  be  typical,  undis 
guised,  and  to  the  top  of  the  bent.  But  when  he 
looked  forward  he  saw  no  turning  in  the  long  lane 
ahead.  He  felt  the  bitter  pain  of  his  malady.  In 
time  it  grew  intolerable,  and  at  last  drove  him  to 
action. 

He  inscribed  in  the  fly-leaf  of  a  book  he  had  prom 
ised  her  the  fair  copy  of  some  verses  he  had  writ 
ten.  They  pleaded  his  cause  from  that  fantastic 
elevation  to  which  his  over-sensitive  interpretations 
had  lifted  it;  and  if  after  all  they  were  prose,  they 
had  a  touch  of  the  dignity  into  which  he  had  with 
drawn  to  meet  the  blow  which  he  knew  must  follow. 

Upon  the  top  of  this  high  wooded  hill 
The  temple  we  have  builded  stands  serene, 
Stately  and  fair,  with  sunlit  colonnades 

That  open  out  for  us  on  all  the  world. 

i 

And  you  would  linger,  thus  we  differ  so, 
Though  friends  no  less,  within  the  colonnades, 


24  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

Where  you  and  I,  though  we  together  walk 

Hand  fast  in  hand  and  murmuring  each  to  each, 

Must  needs  look  outward;  and  the  sunlit  world, 

Lying  before  us,  many-colored,  fair, 

Or  sometimes  crying  in  its  misery, 

Is  with  us  in  this  temple  we  have  wrought. 

Do  you  not  see,  dear,  that  we  can  not  have 

Our  temple,  though  we  builded  it  ourselves, 

Without  an  inner  portal  which  will  lead  — 

Ah,  can  it  be  you  fear?  —  through  twilit  aisles 

To  chapeled  recesses,  to  mystic  crypts, 

Down  undreamed  passages  to  tapered  shrines  — 

Perhaps  with  one  shrine  yet  unguessed,  whose  god  — 

Would  it  be  only  Friendship?     Ah,  who  knows? 

He  awaited  with  hot  and  cold  blood  the  time 
when  he  should  see  her  again,  anticipating  in  her 
first  glance  the  decision  that  he  had  precipitated. 
He  looked  at  himself  with  baffled  scorn.  He  had 
seen  a  good  deal  of  the  world,  climbed  its  mountains, 
braved  its  seas,  endured  good  fortune  and  bad,  and 
had  come  back,  to  a  life  of  seclusion  indeed,  but 
with  toughened  fibers  and  a  mind  above  the  foibles 
of  ease-softened  men,  to  sit  aloof  and  understand 
that  life  that  had  proved  so  empty.  And  here  was 
he,  humbled  to  the  common  level,  weaker  than  the 
lover  of  the  ball  room,  trembling  lest  he  fail  to  win 
a  boon  at  the  hands  of  a  young  girl,  a  personal  boon 
—  he  who  had  thought  to  live  above  the  petty  and 
the  personal — and  a  boon  that  would  commit  him 
to  the  petty  and  the  personal  for  all  his  time  to 
come.  He  scorned  himself  hotly  —  and  he  trembled 
for  his  fate. 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  25 

When  it  came  it  came  simply.  Her  steady  eyes 
met  his,  fearlessly,  tenderly.  Without  the  ability  to 
read  there  his  sentence  he  saw  swept  away  all  the 
tangled  cobwebs  of  his  fantastic  weaving.  He  had 
wrought  masculinely,  grotesquely;  he  had  built  in  a 
realm  of  unreality.  And  now  at  once  as  they  faced 
one  another  they  were  simply  two  —  a  man  and  a 
woman.  In  that  timeless  moment  his  love  grew 
lucid  and  infinitely  tender.  He  saw  in  her  clear 
and  calm  eyes  the  pure  and  natural  reality  of  their 
human  relation,  and  her  woman's  competence  to  deal 
with  her  woman's  crisis.  The  moment  was  simpler 
and  more  natural  for  her  than  for  him.  He  felt 
very  young  in  the  presence  of  her  immemorial  wo 
manhood. 

Then  in  the  tremulous  tension  of  her  mouth,  in 
her  distressed  brow,  in  the  luminous  promise  of  tears 
in  her  eyes,  he  read  the  simple  sincerity  of  her  un 
derstanding  and  the  pain  of  her  denial.  The  bar 
riers  of  opinion  that  had  troubled  him,  the  attitude 
to  life,  all  the  cultivated  qualities  of  brain  and 
heart  were  not  of  the  situation.  These  were  mat 
ters  of  friendship,  and  she  was  still  his  friend.  Her 
denial  came  from  deeper  sources. 

He  had  not  known  till  then  the  intensity  of  his 
longing.  The  days  and  weeks  of  hot  grief  that  fol 
lowed  were  easier  to  bear  than  the  later  time  of 
grey  and  empty  indifference  when  life  had  faded  and 
dulled,  when  he  saw  colors  and  lost  their  poignant 
appeal,  when  he  heard  melodies  and  cared  nothing 
for  their  sweetness,  and  when  old  odors  brought  but 
the  sense  of  waste  in  the  tender  memories  that  they 


• 


26  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

recalled.  All  the  native  intuitions  and  perceptions 
had  gathered  themselves  for  a  supreme  moment,  and 
then,  baffled  and  rejected,  had  sunk  back  withered 
and  inert. 

When  his  interests  began  in  time  to  revive  he  met 
them  shamefacedly  and  fought  them  back.  He  clung 
desperately  to  his  misery.  Then  one  day  he  found 
himself  smiling  down  at  himself  from  his  aloof  con 
ning  tower.  With  that  he  knew  that  he  was  conva 
lescent,  and  hungry  again  for  life. 

He  had  no  poignant  regrets.  Inevitably  there 
were  moments  of  loneliness,  when  his  memory  con 
jured  up  old  dreams.  But  he  could  smile  at  the 
idyllic  inconsistency  even  of  these  dreams,  knowing 
that  only  as  dreams  could  they  have  left  his  life  as 
happy  as  it  was.  For  his  present  life  suited  the  tem 
per  of  his  spirit.  He  rejoiced  in  its  seclusion,  in  its 
leisure,  in  the  dignity  of  a  position  that  gave  him 
entry  to  all  sorts  of  men  and  excused  him  from  the 
need  to  go  among  them.  Echoes  of  reproach,  espe 
cially  from  feminine  sources,  that  his  way  of  life 
was  wholly  selfish,  reached  him  from  time  to  time, 
and  amused  him.  At  least  he  had  done  his  best.  The 
memory  of  old  fears  lest  he  miss  some  part  of  the 
typical  life  of  men  came  back  to  him  only  to 
strengthen  his  philosophic  acceptance  of  his  own 
limitations.  He  saw  these  limitations  now  more 
clearly,  and  took  himself  as  he  was.  Besides,  he  had 
had  his  romance. 

Looking  backwards  he  reasoned  that  he  had  over 
laid  the  spontaneous  and  natural  elements  of  his 
temperament  too  deeply  to  strike,  in  some  one  else, 


A  Lover  of  the  Chair  27 

the  answering  spark  of  love.    Love  was  a  matter  of 
temperament,  of  native,  not  acquired  qualities. 

It  was  only  later,  when  he  fell  again  happily  in 
love,  that  he  ceased  to  generalize  about  the  vagaries 
of  this  stirring  and  masterful  passion. 


II 

CHAIR  AND  SADDLE 

IN  the  stretch  that  followed  the  rebellion  of  his 
early  thirties  he  developed  into  a  kind  of  ma 
ture  youthfulness  that  seemed,  to  his  grim  amuse 
ment,  to  dodge  awkwardly  between  the  privileges 
of  youth  and  the  authority  of  age.  His  opinions 
were  no  longer  smiled  at  tolerantly  as  the  promising 
exuberance  of  young  blood,  nor  listened  to  seriously 
as  the  accumulation  of  experience. 

Certain  friends  of  his  boyhood  whom  he  saw  now 
and  again  seemed  to  have  done  better.  They  gave 
him  the  impression  of  having  definitely  grown  up. 
They  were  irritating  in  the  effect  they  produced  of 
terrible  impressiveness,  as  though  they  had  taken 
better  advantage  of  their  time  and  got  on  to  a  defi 
nite  maturity.  They  had  set  chins  and  firm  mouths 
of  the  slightly  hard  American  kind;  they  spoke  in 
cisively,  without  doubts  and  without  shading;  and 
they  were  listened  to.  For  the  most  part  they  were 
in  business,  or  in  the  professions  that  with  us  in 
America  are  the  adjuncts  of  business.  But  occasion 
ally  some  of  them,  or  of  their  kind,  had  drifted  into 
the  more  disinterested  walks,  and  proved  there  to 
their  own  satisfaction  and  the  general  applause  that 
wherever  the  red-blooded  man  got  into  the  saddle 
the  ambling  nag  underneath  woke  up  and  began  a 
smart  canter. 


Chair  and  Saddle  29 

He  found  his  own  nag,  indeed,  going  at  such  a  gait 
under  him  that  he  began  to  doubt  whether  he  could 
keep  his  seat.  And  when  he  snatched  fearful  glances 
about  him  for  a  reasonably  safe  place  to  alight,  he 
saw  nothing  but  inhospitable  doors  closed  to  him. 
He  perceived  promptly  enough  that  the  difficulty 
lay  in  himself;  his  pace  damned  him.  One  door, 
however,  he  did  try,  without  discarding  his  mount. 
It  looked  more  inviting  than  any  other  he  could  see. 
But  after  a  good  deal  of  knocking  he  met  with  cour 
teous  refusals  no  less  positive  than  those  he  had 
foreseen  elsewhere.  It  was  the  door  of  the  pub 
lishers;  he  had  begun  to  write. 

The  stuff  he  wrote  bore  plainly  the  stamp  of  fu 
tility;  he  dealt  with  what  he  was  interested  in  and 
treated  it  from  his  own  point  of  view.  His  interest 
was  the  eternal  one,  indeed,  in  human  nature;  but 
his  point  of  view  was  the  obsolete  one  that  the 
French  describe  in  the  term  moral  —  the  disinter 
ested  play  of  the  discursive  reason  in  the  field  of 
life  and  letters.  And  he  took  it  seriously.  He  had 
humor,  it  is  true,  but  even  his  humor  he  took  a 
little  sadly,  as  befitted  the  human  plight.  It  was 
with  a  wry  smile,  therefore,  that  he  saw  his  efforts 
complained  of  as  not  sufficiently  serious  for  publi 
cation. 

His  colleagues  about  him  wrote  and  were  pub 
lished,  but  they  wrote  in  a  more  current  vein,  senti 
mentally,  or  scientifically,  or  in  the  interest  of  some 
propaganda  or  current  enthusiasm.  He  took  his 
grievance,  however,  without  a  sour  face,  and  worked 
on  undiscouraged,  putting  the  substance  of  his  ideas 
into  brief  essays  condensed  with  the  bitter  pain  of 


3O  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

concentration.  There  were  passages  that  he  be 
lieved  to  have  attained  to  some  perfection  of  ex 
pression.  He  could  smile,  indeed,  at  his  own  vanity, 
and  not  infrequently  did,  but  it  was  disconcerting 
to  have  his  labors  smiled  at  by  others.  One  frank 
editor  spoke  of  them  as  the  dilletante  play  of  an 
otiose  fancy.  He  cherished  this  comment  grimly. 
It  had  been  called  forth  by  his  animadversion  that 
the  significance  of  history  lay  in  its  interpretation. 
He  collated  this  with  the  complaint  of  another  edi 
tor  that  he  had  used  the  reason  where  the  reason 
had  no  place.  His  point  on  this  occasion  had  been 
that  the  significance  of  poetry  lay  in  the  moving  ex 
pression  of  its  idea. 

There  was  private  amusement  to  be  had  out  of 
all  this,  and  in  the  serenity  of  his  philosophic  mo 
ments  he  had  the  humor  to  suck  enjoyment  from  it. 
But  he  was  human  enough  in  very  virtue  of  the 
humane  quality  of  his  interests  to  long,  at  other  and 
frequenter  moments,  for  a  little  larger  group  to 
share  his  appreciation  with,  and  take  a  little  of  the 
forlornness  out  of  his  fun. 

This  forlornness  became  particularly  acute  one 
afternoon  when  he  found  himself  forced  to  provide 
himself  with  new  storage  room  for  an  intolerable 
heap  of  post-worn  manuscripts  that  lay  on  his  hands. 
In  a  collective  survey  he  amused  himself  with  the 
infinite  variations  of  courtesy  —  ironic  in  the  damn 
ing  fact  of  print  —  that  were  possible  to  notices  of 
rejection.  And  on  the  heels  of  this,  in  a  hurried 
half-hour's  conversation,  he  was  plunged  into  an 
other  variety  of  condemnation,  and  given  to  see  with 
fine  explicitness  the  ultimate  reason  for  his  obscurity. 


Chair  and  Saddle  31 

While  he  was  dustily  busy  with  this  expanding 
heap  of  manuscripts,  he  was  caught  by  one  of  his 
red-blooded  colleagues,  who  had  come  in  upon  him 
on  half-official  matters.  His  visitor  was  one  who  had 
got  on,  one  who  sat  the  canter  easily  and  touched 
it  up  with  spur  and  crop.  He  rode  well  and  erect 
and  with  a  fine  confidence;  the  glow  of  speed  was  in 
his  eye.  Certainly  he  was  a  more  pleasing  spectacle 
than  the  riders  of  the  older  school. 

He  was  a  modern  anti-intellectualist  in  his  avowed 
philosophy  and  took  his  attitude  quite  seriously  and 
not  a  little  dogmatically  —  a  reasoner  of  the  type 
that  so  promptly  accrued  to  M.  Bergson's  follow 
ing.  His  discipleship  was  superficial,  perhaps,  but 
he  had  enough  of  that  philosopher's  convincing  logic 
to  disconcert  those  of  his  antagonists  who  stuck  to 
a  belief  in  the  reason. 

From  the  aloof  quiet  of  his  library,  where  our 
friend  spent  enough  of  his  days  to  keep  his  judg 
ments  unroiled,  this  personage  had  seemed  to  him 
eminently  unimportant.  But  there  was  a  sense  con 
nected  with  some  of  his  current  reflections  in  which 
unimportant  was  a  very  hard  word  to  pronounce. 
For  the  man  was  of  the  kind  that  inevitably  won 
suffrage  and  built  upon  suffrage.  And  his  particu 
lar  combination  of  politics  and  anti-intellectualism 
was  growing  common  and  desperately  effective. 

These  reflections  were  sufficiently  irrelevant  at  the 
moment,  and  only  won  pertinence  by  the  accident  of 
a  discussion  that  the  two  men,  so  polar  in  their 
inner  opposition,  fell  into  on  another  topic.  The 
pile  of  rejected  manuscripts  was  lying  openly  con 
fessional  on  the  table  before  them,  and  shrank  a  bit, 


32  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

in  the  sensitive  person  of  their  author,  before  the 
successful  presence  that  now  confronted  it.  For 
this  red-blooded  modern  was  the  author  of  three 
widely  read  books,  and  had  become  what  in  the 
current  tongue  is  called  an  "authority"  on  social 
questions. 

Our  friend  himself  was  not  unfound  on  that  score, 
and  had  indeed  been  reading  the  rejection  of  an 
article  mildly  social  when  the  other  entered.  It  had 
been  so  unusual  in  its  terms,  this  rejection,  and  so 
caustic  in  its  revelation  of  the  editor's  bitter  soul, 
that  he  took  now  a  kind  of  ironic  joy  in  handing  it 
over  to  his  visitor  with  a  wave  of  his  hand  toward 
the  rejected  remains  on  the  table. 

The  moment  he  withdrew  his  fingers  he  repented. 
For  the  other,  though  he  had  wit  enough,  had  little 
of  that  self-directed  humor  that  is  the  mother  of 
urbanity  among  equals.  His  dogmatic  and  un- 
doubting  temper  served  him  well  among  those  who 
discover  seriousness  only  in  solemnity  —  college 
officials,  the  world  of  women's  clubs,  and  the  more 
intelligent  philistines  —  and  it  was  among  them  that 
he  had  won  his  place  as  a  man  of  ideas.  But  for 
friendly  talk  upon  serious  subjects  he  had  none  of 
the  penetrating  frankness,  the  experimental  courage, 
the  amused  self-doubt,  that  make  an  adventure  of 
conversation.  Our  friend,  therefore,  watched  the 
perusal  with  a  touch  of  compunction.  He  was  un 
certain  how  it  would  be  taken. 

"We  publish  what  will  go,"  the  editor  had  said, 
"and  your  stuff  won't  go.  It  is  detached,  disinter 
ested.  You  lack  what  is  known  as  'life'.  You  don't 
content  yourself  with  the  immediate  play  of  appear- 


Chair  and  Saddle  33 

ances  —  of  things.  Your  ideas  are  general;  they  are 
ideas;  you  say  what  is  true  of  a  number  of  cases 
instead  of  what  is  true  of  a  single  case  —  of  what  is 
unique.  You  lack  edge.  You  ought  to  catch  the 
vivid  drift  of  a  lock  of  hair  across  a  fair  brow;  and 
what  you  do  is  to  catch  the  invisible  turn  of  mind 
of  a  whole  section  of  mankind.  You  try  to  write  for 
people  who  are  educated,  people  who  think  alike 
even  when  they  disagree,  who  know  an  idea  when 
they  see  one,  and  aren't  pared  down  to  the  senses 
God  gave  them  to  go  to  the  movies  with.  And  such 
people  no  longer  exist. 

"You  see  evils,  and  you  blame  the  readers  for 
them;  what  we  want  is  to  blame  someone  else.  You 
have  an  idea  that  the  people  in  their  normal  char 
acter  —  temper,  intelligence,  and  morals  —  deter 
mine  the  quality  of  their  own  social  conditions,  and 
that  whatever  revolution  may  come  they  drift  back, 
after  it,  to  the  old  level,  through  the  push  of  those 
same  normal  forces.  We  want  to  spread  the  idea 
that  by  a  burst  of  energy  a  device  can  be  got  into 
operation  that  will  take  the  place  of  personal  virtue 
and  intelligence.  You  want  to  make  people  mistrust 
their  normal  selves;  we  want  to  make  them  trust 
their  normal  selves.  ..." 

When  his  visitor  looked  up  our  friend  was  winc 
ing  under  the  recollection  of  raw  and  flattering  ex 
aggerations  in  certain  phrases  of  the  letter.  He  need 
not.  The  face  that  looked  at  him  was  full  of  com 
placent  sympathy. 

"He  is  pretty  hard  on  you." 

"Bitterly,"  our  friend  returned. 

"You  are  a  conservative,  I  take  it." 


34  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"No,  a  radical." 

"But  these  things  he  says  ..." 

"My  radicalism  is  what  he  objects  to." 

"I'm  afraid  I  don't  understand."  There  was  a 
touch  of  asperity  in  the  voice  now. 

"You  are  right  and  I  am  wrong,"  his  host  re 
turned.  "I  was  playing  with  the  idea.  My  point  was 
simply  that  ideas  lie  at  the  root  of  all  our  voluntary 
changes,  and  as  I  was  in  search  of  ideas  I  called 
myself  a  radical  —  ideas,  of  course,  in  the  sense  of 
those  guiding  principles  and  opinions  that  determine 
actions." 

His  visitor  pondered  for  a  moment,  the  impa 
tience  not  quite  gone  from  the  finger  tips  that  tapped 
the  arm  of  his  chair.  He  was  a  Liberal  of  the  cur 
rent  school,  and  our  friend  found,  in  the  none  too 
urbane  discussion  which  followed,  something  of  the 
serious  amusement  with  which  he  normally  looked 
upon  certain  of  the  Liberal  paradoxes. 

"Conservative,  though,  in  the  ordinary  sense?" 
his  guest  asked  at  last. 

"I  imagine;  though  sometimes  when  I  look  around 
I  wonder  what  I  want  to  conserve." 

"The  authority  of  the  few,  I  judge." 

"If  I  could  select  my  few,"  our  friend  smiled. 
"But  yes,  that  in  principle. 

"You  hold  against  the  majority  opinion." 

"As  such,  yes.  The  point  is,  of  course,  the  very 
old  commonplace  that  the  idea  ought  to  be  judged 
on  its  own." 

The  subject  was  broached,  and  our  friend  drew 
himself  together  in  response  to  an  indefinable  loin- 
girding  on  the  part  of  his  guest. 


Chair  and  Saddle  35 

"Aren't  you  describing,"  the  latter  began  — 
"aren't  you  describing  the  conditions  that  made  for 
this?"  And  his  hand  rested  on  the  pile  of  rejected 
manuscripts. 

"Ah,  there  they  are,"  our  friend  smiled  wryly. 

"I  don't  so  much  mean,"  hastened  his  interlocu 
tor,  "that  you  should  write  what  the  people  want  — 
that  you  should  be  a  'trimmer'.  What  I  mean  is  that 
a  philosopher  of  the  few  can  expect  to  find  his 
readers  limited." 

"I  wish  I  could  make  them  more,"  his  host  re 
turned  heartily.  "You  have  managed  it.  I  won't 
ask  for  advice,  for  I  suppose  I  am  like  others  and 
would  go  on  in  my  old  way  in  spite  of  it.  But  the 
idea  would  be  —  ?" 

"To  have  another  philosophy." 

"Of  the  many?" 

"Yes." 

The  distinction  between  that  and  trimming  was  at 
first  obscure,  and  indeed  it  left  the  Liberal  a  little 
uncomfortable. 

"You  must  have  the  philosophy,  of  course,"  he 
went  on.  "There  is  the  difference.  For  my  own 
part  I  think  that  the  time  has  past  when  the  finest 
minds  aim  at  distinction.  Rather  they  prize  what 
is  common  to  all  humanity,  and  prefer  to  merge 
their  own  with  the  universal  mind  and  will  of  the 
race." 

Our  friend  made  no  answer.  His  thoughts  went 
for  a  moment  to  the  obscurity  of  those  few  at  whom 
the  remark  seemed  to  be  aimed,  and  at  the  eminence 
of  those  who  caught  the  general  ear.  He  wondered 
whether,  for  these  latter,  independent  thinking  did 


36  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

appear  to  be  only  a  bid  for  distinction  —  whether 
perhaps,  in  the  habit  of  building  upon  suffrage,  they 
had  not  lost  the  drive  and  compulsion  of  an  indi 
vidual  opinion. 

"My  trouble  is,"  he  resumed  at  last,  "that  I  find 
it  hard  to  know  what  you  mean.  I  don't  know  how 
to  think  except  with  my  own  mind.  And  when  I 
find  that  differing  from  the  popular  one  —  why,  I 
side  with  myself.  It's  an  old-fashioned  egotism, 
but  I  don't  see  how  I  can  do  anything  else." 

"You  are  an  intellectual,"  the  other  returned, 
"  —  you  don't  mind  my  saying  it?  —  and  I  imagine 
that  the  day  of  the  intellectuals  has  passed.  I  find 
myself  a  little  abrupt,  but  we  started  by  explaining 
that  heap  of  manuscripts.  You  say  that  they  don't 
go.  And  I  should  say  that  perhaps  the  reason  is 
that,  so  to  speak,  the  bottom  has  fallen  out  of  intel- 
lectualism.  You  trust  to  your  reason,  you  intellec 
tuals,  and  yet  —  Shall  we  go  into  this?" 

"By  all  means." 

"Well,  then,  at  the  bottom  is  the  fact  that  the 
reason  has  no  solid  criteria,  nothing  stable  to  build 
upon,  nothing  indisputable  except  —  I  speak  imper 
sonally —  the  self-complacency  of  an  elect  that 
have  been  self-elected.  And  now  that  our  modern 
philosophy  has  shown  how  fluid  and  misty  and  wil 
ful  the  premises  of  your  reason  are,  there  is  a  kind 
of  sense  abroad  that  the  intellectuals  have  rather 
imposed  on  humanity  in  the  past.  The  movement 
of  Liberalism  has  been  a  steady  revolt  against  self- 
constituted  authority  —  priest,  autocrat,  tyrant,  and 
now  the  intellectuals  —  arbiters  of  all  kinds  who  set 
themselves  up  as  umpires  of  actions  or  ideas  or 
tastes." 


Chair  and  Saddle  37 

An  ironic  retort  clamored  for  release.  Our  friend 
compromised. 

"My  own  difficulty,"  he  said,  "when  I  get  to  that 
stage  of  skepticism,  is  that  there  seems  to  be  no 
warrant  for  any  ideas  at  all." 

"That  is  it,"  the  other  assented. 

"But  you  Liberals  —  just  now  you  seem  to  be  full 
of  ideas.  You  quite  go  in  for  regulation,  restriction, 
and  the  control  of  the  individual." 

"It  is  true,  of  course,"  the  other  returned,  "but  if 
there  is  no  warrant  for  ideas  as  such,  it  is  our  belief 
that  the  ideas  that  go  ought  to  be  selected  by  those 
who  are  going  to  be  affected  by  them." 

"Everyone  for  himself?" 

"That  would  be  anarchy.  No  —  on  the  whole  and 
in  the  large." 

"By  majority  vote,  theii." 

"Yes.  On  the  belief  that  the  majority  opinion 
is  the  wisest  and  justest  obtainable." 

Our  troubled  friend  pondered  for  a  moment  over 
his  guest's  thus  begging  the  question.  To  postulate 
the  majority  opinion  should  have  been  the  last  word; 
to  bring  in  "justice"  and  "wisdom"  was  to  bring  in 
ideas.  But  he  gave  over  the  point  as  too  subtle  for 
their  present  driving  manner.  He  went  on  to  another 
point  that  troubled  him. 

"Majority  opinion  —  you  use  the  phrase.  But 
for  my  own  part,  when  I  try  to  follow  that  concep 
tion  down  to  the  roots,  and  get  rid,  as  you  have  done 
just  now,  of  all  individual  opinion  and  all  new  ideas 
that  crop  up  in  individual  minds,  all  that  I  find  is 
just  what  is  —  what  is.  What  is,  at  any  moment, 
is  the  expression  of  the  aggregate  opinion,  the  bal- 


38  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

ance  of  all  the  extant  motives.  For  anyone  to  try 
to  change  the  situation  would  be  to  try  to  inject  an 
idea  into  the  balance  —  and  that  is  against  the 
theory.  The  only  thing  to  do  would  be  to  let  things 
drift." 

"Opinions,  of  course,  have  to  begin  somewhere," 
the  other  answered.  "The  Liberal  point  is,  nat 
urally,  that  they  should  be  made  over  into  majority 
opinion  by  general  explanation  and  persuasion. 
Aren't  you  a  little  over-subtle?" 

Our  friend  smiled.  It  was  subtlety  or  nothing. 
With  a  sigh  he  saw  fate  descending  upon  him.  The 
other,  with  his  fine  flow,  and  the  touch  of  tolerance 
which  his  red  blood  gave  him  the  lordly  right  to, 
would  in  a  moment  ride  off  in  triumph.  Nothing 
could  better  the  fine  manner,  but  it  refined  even 
upon  itself  with  the  open  generosity  with  which  it 
smiled  and  mollified  its  rebuke.  What  wonder  its 
owner  won  suffrage!  Our  friend  squirmed  with  the 
sense  of  his  own  insignificance. 

"My  point,"  he  went  on,  none  the  less,  with  a 
desperate  pride,  "is  that  for  the  moment  we  are 
both  of  us  getting  at  the  bottom,  and  the  bottom  is 
always  a  little  elusive.  For  my  part  I  wanted  to  get 
at  two  things.  And  now  you  must  smile,  or  what  I 
say  will  be  intolerable.  These  manuscripts  of  mine 
—  to  tell  the  truth  I  should  like  to  see  my  ideas 
taken  up  and  become  majority  opinion.  I  have  my 
vanity,  you  see.  That  puts  them,  philosophically,  on 
all  fours  with  a  Liberal  opinion,  doesn't  it,  before  the 
Liberal  opinion  gets  majority  support?" 

The  other  waited  with  a  kindly  smile. 

"We  are  all,  I  imagine,"  our  friend  went  on, 


Chair  and  Saddle  39 

"tarred  with  the  same  stick  —  tainted  with  intellec- 
tualism.  Even  you  use  your  reason  to  persuade  us 
that  reason  is  fustian;  and  but  a  moment  since  you 
spoke  of  making  over  individual  opinion  into  ma 
jority  opinion  by  general  explanation  and  persua 
sion.  And  in  your  politics  you  propound  theories  of 
wisdom  and  justice  in  majorities  that  seem  to  some 
of  us  the  most  airy  and  brain-spun  of  pure  ideas. 
We  are  all  of  us  condemned  to  intellectualism  so 
long  as  we  talk,  and  plan,  and  keep  a  pride  in  our 
human  capacity  to  affect  our  own  fate.  And  it  is 
you  Liberals  who  have  the  greatest  faith  in  that 
capacity. 

"Those  are  some  of  the  reasons  why  some  of  us 
hold  back  from  what  in  many  ways  can't  help  having 
a  strong  appeal  to  us.  For  my  own  part  I  like  your 
Liberal  hopes  even  when  I  can't  hope  with  you.  But 
your  theories  often,  as  in  this  case,  go  too  much 
against  even  your  inner  beliefs  and  outer  practices  to 
win  our  sympathy.  Like  you  we  must  go  on  saying 
what  we  think.  I  am  afraid  that  my  heap  of  stuff 
must  go  on  piling  up.  And  really  what  else  is  there 
for  it?" 

The  other  sat  for  a  moment,  pondering  the  little 
problem  that  so  troubled  his  host. 

"The  trouble  lies  in  your  ideas,"  he  said  at  last. 
"As  your  harsh  editor  writes,  they  won't  do.  You 
are  conservative;  and  the  day  of  conservatism  is 
past.  As  for  us,  we  have  faced  about.  We  are  look 
ing  at  the  future.  And  then,  too,  it  is  your  attitude. 
Where  you  differ  from  the  Liberals  is  in  this  —  that 
you  care  more  for  your  ideas  than  you  do  for  hu 
manity." 


40  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"And  yet,"  our  friend  mused,  "it  is  you  who  wish 
to  change  humanity  according  to  your  ideas,  and  we 
who  wish  to  preserve  what  humanity  has  estab 
lished." 

They  hung  upon  that  for  a  moment.  There  was  a 
disconcerting  point  to  it. 

"It  it  a  matter  of  sympathy  —  sympathy  for 
the  human  thing,"  his  visitor  concluded,  ignoring 
the  pause.  "The  whole  Liberal  effort,  often  bungling 
I  dare  say,  is  aimed  at  the  opening  up  of  more  and 
more  of  the  vital  sources  of  this  humanity.  Look  at 
it  now,  nine  tenths  of  it  suppressed,  mute,  going  to 
waste,  humanly  speaking,  like  immemorial  ants.  I 
have  turned  over  a  stone  on  a  lonely  mountain  peak 
in  the  Rockies,  and  watched  the  endless  conserva 
tism  of  a  life  there  that  has  not  changed  from  the 
beginning,  and  will  not  change,  slaves  and  rulers 
alike,  to  a  disheartening  eternity.  And  when  I  have 
looked  back  at  humanity  again,  and  seen  so  much  of 
the  dull  repetition  of  that  endless  spectacle  under 
the  stone,  I  have  seen  too  that  the  human  thing  is  to 
get  away  from  that  —  to  change,  to  progress,  and 
to  give  the  least  of  them  some  share  in  the  forces  of 
change.  That  is  what  I  mean  by  democracy.  If  you 
are  not  in  sympathy  with  that  movement  —  "  he 
smiled  kindly  and  waved  his  hand  toward  the  heap 
on  the  table  —  "I'm  afraid  you  will  go  on  building 
your  sad  monument  here.  For  we  are  likely  to  be 
permanent;  in  a  democracy  might  and  authority  are 
on  the  same  side." 

He  left,  and  left  our  friend  in  the  itching  discom 
fort  of  unvented  opinion.  "To  give  to  the  least  of 
them  some  share  in  the  forces  of  change!"  Change 


Chair  and  Saddle  41 

in  what  direction,  and  with  what  aim?  And  in  that 
question  was  involved  the  problem  that  this  modern 
was  so  scornful  about  through  his  philosophical  vent. 
Clearly  the  terrible  thing  about  him  and  his  Liberal 
partisans  was  their  extreme  intellectualism  through 
their  political  vent.  They  would  mold  life  over,  at 
once,  and  with  a  stroke  of  the  pen. 

Still  he  knew  that  there  was  a  case  for  these  men 
of  action  —  a  case  as  good  as  his  own.  He  had  the 
ambiguous  blessing  of  imagination  and  could  see 
himself,  in  the  interims  of  his  militant  moods,  from 
their  point  of  view.  They  were  the  masters  of  the 
world,  and  if  they  had  the  strut  and  swagger  of  con 
querors,  who  could  blame  them,  or  blame  them  the 
touch  of  contempt,  kindly  or  tolerant,  but  still  con 
tempt,  with  which  they  must  look  down  on  the 
aenemic  scholar  bending  over  his  midnight  treatise, 
feet  cold  and  head  hot,  wrestling  with  subtle  brain- 
spun  distinctions  twixt  tweedledum  and  tweedledee 
that  the  gross  world  could  never  see,  or  seeing  could 
never  have  the  patience  or  the  care  to  act  upon? 

He  had  no  contempt  of  his  own,  however,  for  his 
own  kind.  Rather  he  knew  that  each  was  necessary, 
each  complementing  the  other.  It  was  a  game,  one 
of  the  eternal  conflicts,  and  he  took  it  so,  not  flip 
pantly,  but  with  the  decent  good  humor  that  should 
keep  bitterness  out  of  the  calculation.  He  saw,  too, 
that  if  the  men  of  action  so  often  had  the  better  of  it 
in  the  way  of  action,  the  others  as  often  had  the  bet 
ter  of  it  in  the  way  of  ideas;  and  having  chosen  his 
side  he  could  have  nothing  to  complain  of.  He 
played  the  game  hard,  therefore,  no  doubt  often 
puffing  and  blowing  in  the  heat  of  hard-fought  points, 


42  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

but  willing  in  the  end  to  acknowledge  the  fight  worth 
while  and  his  opponent  the  thing  that  made  it  so. 

He  sat  musing  after  his  guest's  departure,  stirred 
to  his  reflections  by  the  sense  that  it  was  such  irri 
tations  as  he  had  just  been  chafing  under  that  roused 
him  to  react.  For  he  was  tingling  pleasantly  with 
the  consciousness  that  there  was  still  something 
more  to  be  said  about  ideas  and  Liberalism. 


Ill 

A  LIBERAL  EXPERIENCE 

THE  point  of  this  adventure  was  in  the  pecu 
liarly  tentative  turn  of  it.  The  adventurer 
himself,  in  the  midst  of  American  life  where  so  many 
masculine  things  have  gone  overboard,  had  main 
tained  toward  practical  affairs  a  very  masculine  habit 
of  disinterested  observation  and  reflection.  He 
paid  a  high  price  for  the  indulgence.  He  forfeited 
the  approval  of  the  feminine  part  of  the  local  world 
he  lived  in,  and  with  us  that  comes  to  a  very  swinge 
ing  majority.  The  older-fashioned  among  them  felt 
the  ancient,  subtle  resentment  at  his  aloofness,  qua 
aloofness,  and  the  newer-fashioned  resented  his 
thoughtfulness  for  not  being  immediate,  and  ardent, 
and  propagandist. 

The  end  of  it  was  that  he  came  back  after  his 
adventure  to  a  very  lively  and  very  much  heated 
public  opinion.  The  adventure  itself  was  over  and 
done  before  the  war  began  in  1914,  and  the  local 
flare  would  probably  have  gone  out  as  rapidly  as 
such  flares  do  if  the  war  itself  had  not  intervened 
to  give  a  peculiar  edge  to  his  speculations.  By  a 
slender  tenure  he  held  a  post  that  was  half  public  in 
its  nature,  and  this  public  exposure  laid  him  open 
to  what  followed.  What  did  follow  was  a  good  deal 
of  newspaper  publicity,  and  a  delegation. 


44  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

He  dealt  with  the  delegation  patiently,  a  little 
amusedly.  It  was  in  the  nature  of  his  temper  that 
he  could  not  answer  questions  in  monosyllables,  and 
the  delegation  wanted  monosyllabic  answers.  They 
wanted  to  know  specifically  whether  he  believed  in 
democracy.  His  reply  was  not  evasive,  but  it  was 
laborious  and  complex,  and  probably  seemed  eva 
sive  to  their  impatience. 

What  he  tried  to  make  them  see,  and  what  seemed 
so  hard  for  them  to  see,  was  that  since  we  were  al 
ready  a  democracy  the  great  thing  was  to  maintain 
a  constant  and  goading  criticism  of  it.  To  them 
criticism  meant  simple  hostility.  They  did  not  quite 
grasp  his  interest  in  the  idea,  or  fathom  his  sense 
that  to  question  the  idea  at  every  point  was  the  only 
mode  of  keeping  it  vital.  His  answer  that  it  was 
not  the  critical  but  the  uncritical  who  were  the 
threat  to  democracy,  left  them  a  little  hostile.  In 
the  end  their  blunt  question  whether  if  he  could  he 
would  overthrow  democracy  tomorrow  brought  out 
his  surprised  and  evidently  sincere,  "No."  They 
left  him  then.  They  were  puzzled,  a  little  angry. 
They  seemed  to  have  been  robbed  of  the  ground  they 
were  standing  on. 

The  adventure  itself  took  place  not  in  America  at 
all.  A  half-pay  sabbatical  had  offered  him  a  long- 
hoped-for  year  of  leisure,  and  he  had  elected  to 
spend  it  abroad.  He  wanted  certain  things  that 
he  could  get  nowhere  else  —  contact  again  with 
old  and  vivid  associations,  and  access  to  Paris,  to 
the  Alps,  and  to  Italy.  Above  all  he  wanted  the 
perspective  of  America  that  nothing  but  detachment 


A  Liberal   Experience  45 

could  give.  Not  inauspiciously  he  settled  upon 
London. 

Before  he  had  left  a  conscientious  acquaintance 
had  intimated  to  him  with  tact  that  his  going  was  a 
piece  of  self-indulgence  not  so  altruistic  as  the  world 
was  latterly  demanding  of  its  best  spirits  —  that  the 
old  ideal  of  self -improvement  was  giving  way  before 
the  newer  one  of  service. 

The  good  will,  the  large,  vague,  myopic  aspiration 
that  peered  out  of  the  earnest,  solemn  face  before 
him  made  it  impossible  to  smile.  Our  friend  kept 
silence,  waiting  for  other  bolts  from  that  quiver. 
They  came,  one  after  another,  with  the  persuasive 
sincerity  that  made  it  hard  to  treat  them  humanly  as 
they  deserved.  If  these  men  could  only  laugh!  But 
they  had  no  laughter  in  them.  Clearly  they  had 
taken  too  seriously  the  substitution  of  service  for 
self-improvement. 

He  knew  that  the  best  Liberals  had  no  belief  in 
such  clap-trap,  however  sincerely  it  came  from  the 
mouths  of  the  feeble;  but  he  found  himself  in  this 
quandary  as  to  Liberalism  even  at  its  best  —  that 
whatever  the  beauty  of  Liberal  ideals  they  were 
calculated  to  put  increasing  power  into  the  hands  of 
people  like  the  little  man  before  him,  and  of  people 
who  found  such  logic  plausible. 

It  was  this  latter  perception,  flashed  on  him  on 
the  eve  of  his  going  away,  that  gave  a  bent  to  his 
observations  and  reflections  abroad  —  the  percep 
tion  that  Liberalism  had  no  adequate  criticism  in 
America.  There  was  plenty  of  opposition,  it  was 
true,  but  he  knew  that  for  the  most  part  it  was 
merely  illiberal  opposition  —  the  opposition  of  the 


46  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

dog  with  a  bone  to  the  dog  with  none.  That  antago 
nism  threw  his  sympathies  so  far  to  the  side  of 
Mother  Hubbard's  poor  beast,  that  if  he  could  have 
seen  no  third  way  out  he  would  have  gone  over 
heart  and  soul  to  the  Liberals  themselves.  He 
thought  that  he  did  see  a  third  way  out,  however, 
though  to  get  to  it  now  would  be  too  blind  a  leap  in 
the  dark.  So  he  set  himself,  once  off  the  ground  of 
his  responsibilities,  to  groping  toward  it. 

He  settled  in  London  in  the  pleasant  way  they 
have  there  that  goes  by  the  name  of  "lodgings."  It 
took,  indeed,  some  courage  for  our  friend  to  brave 
it  alone,  for  the  peculiar  delight  of  lodgings  begins 
when  good  comrades  go  it  together,  and  increases 
with  the  number  of  available  acquaintances  to  be 
invited  in  at  will.  But  he  began  it,  and  for  a  time 
the  revival  of  old  impressions  kept  him  company 
enough. 

"London!"  he  wrote  back  at  the  end  of  his  first  week. 
"The  thing  is  that  you  feel  at  home  here.  You've  been 
taking  it  in  from  the  time  you  first  wept  over  Oliver 
Twist  and  Little  Nell.  How  universal  and  maudlin  and 
sincere  those  insincerities  of  Dickens  were;  they  caught 
us  all  where  we  lived. 

"Nothing  amazes  you.  That  is  the  great  impression 
that  London  revisited  makes.  You  expect  everything, 
and  everything  turns  out  as  you  expected  —  the  soften 
ing  grime  of  the  London  air,  the  lumbering  busses,  St. 
Paul's  and  the  river,  the  faces  that  Phiz  stamped  on 
your  brain  years  ago  and  you  called  impossible,  shabby- 
genteel  ghosts  out  of  Thackeray,  intricate  streets,  and 
names  that  are  names  of  romance  clinging  here  to  dingy 
reality.  ..." 


A  Liberal  Experience  47 

After  the  pleasant  restlessness  of  his  first  few 
weeks  had  given  way  to  an  heroic  treatment  of  in 
dulgence,  and  he  had  settled  into  a  quieter  content 
with  afternoon  divings  into  the  maelstrom,  his  re 
flections  and  his  readings  began  to  draw  in  upon  the 
special  object  he  had  set  himself  in  pursuit  of.  There 
were  moments  in  these  devious  excursions  into  the 
darker  corners  of  the  town  when  he  was  tempted  in 
rebellion  to  throw  over  the  curious  scrutiny  of  po 
litical  ideas  and  to  rest  passionately  on  any  party 
that  would  undertake,  with  pity  and  courage,  to 
strike  a  blow  for  the  relief  of  the  misery  of  the  poor. 
So  much  was  he  touched  by  two  or  three  instances 
of  degradation  in  poverty  that  came  home  to  his 
definite  knowledge,  and  by  at  least  one  moving 
case  where  a  timely  rescue  had  justified  the  hopes 
that  had  prompted  it,  that  he  felt  again  the  ardor 
of  his  old-time  dreams.  He  saw  again  from  the 
point  of  view  of  those  who  looked  with  intolerant 
impatience  upon  those  who  sat  aloof  and  spun 
theories.  His  own  years  of  secluded  and  snug  re 
flection  smote  him.  All  this  reversion  was  tentative, 
appreciative,  rather  than  active.  He  realized  again 
how  men  might  abandon  themselves  to  those  fer 
vors,  though  he  was,  no  doubt,  far  from  such  aban 
donment  himself. 

It  was  in  a  mood  of  this  kind  that  he  went  one 
day  to  hear  a  Liberal  speaker  who  promised  to  deal 
frankly  with  the  problem.  The  plea  was  half  given 
over  to  touching  pictures  of  wretchedness.  If  the 
speaker  had  stopped  at  that  he  would  have  done 
well.  The  difficulty  was  that  he  could  not  stop  at  that. 
To  stop  at  that  was  to  stop  at  the  present,  to  rouse 


48  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

the  sympathies  of  the  men  and  women  in  front  of 
him,  and  send  them  at  most  on  separate  errands  of 
kindness  to  the  unfortunates  whose  sufferings  they 
could  reach.  But  the  speaker  was  not  looking  to 
immediate  acts  of  charity  and  kindness.  He  was 
looking  into  the  future.  He  was  looking  to  such  a 
control  of  affairs  as  would  prevent  forever  the  con 
ditions  he  found  so  intolerable.  He  wanted  those 
men  and  women  whose  sympathies  he  had  stirred  to 
co-operate  with  him  in  a  scheme  of  control.  It  was 
nobly  and  generously  done.  But  it  cured  our  friend 
of  his  moment  of  weakness.  It  was  patent  at  once 
that  the  only  grasp  the  speaker  could  have  on 
the  future  was  the  despised  one  of  the  aloof  theorists 
themselves.  He  had  nothing  to  offer  but  an  idea. 
One  of  his  auditors  went  away  knowing,  as  he  had 
never  quite  ceased  to  know,  that  aside  from  the  duty 
of  personal  kindliness,  the  problem  was  to  lay  hands 
on  the  right  idea  and  make  it  prevail. 

He  saw,  indeed,  how  it  was  possible  to  be  too 
aloof  and  to  sit  and  spin  ideas  in  cold  words  out  of 
a  cold  heart.  But  ideas  quite  clearly  there  must  be. 
And  now,  though  he  listened  to  one  Liberal  after 
another,  and  found  in  them  no  suspicion  of  spinning 
cold  words  out  of  a  cold  heart,  there  began  to  take 
vague  shape  in  his  mind  the  audacious  conception 
that  the  trouble  with  Liberalism  —  whatever  the  vir 
tues  of  individual  Liberals  —  was,  surprisingly,  just 
that  it  had  no  idea.  That  the  conception  was  quite 
vague,  quite  shadowy,  he  saw  with  a  smile  at  his 
own  expense.  He  was  even  a  little  shocked  at  it. 
But  it  would  not  be  dissipated  by  scrutiny.  When 
he  found  it  thus  standing  its  ground,  refusing  to 


A  Liberal  Experience  49 

vanish  at  cock  crow,  he  sat  down  to  question  it  by 
light  of  day. 

It  remained  for  the  time,  however,  dim  and  un 
pleasantly  ghostly.  But  it  attained  thus  much  of 
definition  as  he  examined  it  —  that  whatever  the 
idea  that  the  Liberals  should  put  up  as  the  funda 
mental  determinant  of  their  political  belief,  that  idea 
might  be  overthrown  by  something  still  more  funda 
mental  in  that  belief  —  by  the  majority. 

His  own  notion  of  a  political  principle  or  idea  was 
that  it  should  itself  be  fundamental  and  constant  — 
as  human  affairs  go  —  and  should,  so  to  speak,  gov 
ern  instead  of  being  governed.  The  very  point  of 
an  idea  was  that  it  stood  over  against  letting  things 
go  as  they  would;  and  the  final  dependence  upon 
majority  opinion  seemed  very  much  like  letting 
things  go  as  they  would. 

He  jotted  these  animadversions  down  in  letters 
home,  and  went  on  observing  and  reflecting.  Later, 
when  he  had  got  better  settled,  and  the  terrace 
where  he  had  his  lodgings  had  begun  to  separate 
itself  into  its  particulars,  acquaintance  took  up  its 
task  of  softening  judgments  with  sympathies.  His 
perceptions  began  to  have  more  color,  and  the  re 
flections  that  had  commenced  misty  took  on  faint 
lines  of  definition.  With  the  ounce  of  compunction 
that  was  his  usual  tribute  to  the  red  face  of  the  pil 
lar  box  after  his  fingers  had  released  a  letter,  he 
had  already  seen  that  in  denying  an  idea  to  the  Lib 
erals  he  had  overlooked  one  possibility;  — that  the 
belief  in  the  majority  might  of  itself  be  an  idea  of 
the  kind  he  was  asking  for,  a  steadying  and  guiding 
principle. 


SO  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

As  a  matter  of  bare  logic  he  knew  that  there  was 
no  necessary  relationship  between  a  majority  and 
either  wisdom  or  justice.  But  he  caught  himself  up 
at  that,  remembering  that  bare  logic  was  far  from 
being  all  that  there  was  to  be  said  about  human 
affairs.  And  now  as  he  looked  about  at  the  men 
and  women  around  him,  with  the  curious  eyes  of  a 
stranger  to  whom  nothing  is  staled  by  custom  and 
nothing  is  taken  for  granted,  and  with  the  growing 
sympathies  of  a  more  inclusive  acquaintance  than 
he  had  ever  formed  before,  he  began  to  perceive 
that  the  majority  was  not  a  mere  mathematical 
count,  but  rather  was  very  human,  made  up  of  men 
and  women  who,  within  the  range  of  possibility, 
might  themselves  be  both  wise  and  just.  The  ques 
tion  after  all  and  at  bottom  was  a  question  of  fact. 
Establish  the  fact  and  the  rest  could  be  reasoned. 
He  began  to  look  curiously  into  the  fact. 

He  was  in  one  of  those  streets  off  Bayswater  Road 
—  stuccoed  ghosts  of  Georgian  fashion  —  that 
gather  an  odd  mixture  of  people  but  still  maintain  a 
kind  of  identity  of  their  own.  It  was  not  an  identity 
of  wealth;  it  was  distinctly  lodgings.  There  were 
rarely  occasional  villas  inside  their  own  grounds,  and 
some  of  the  denizens  were  idlers;  but  the  general 
tone  of  the  street  was  made  by  "activity"  of  some 
kind,  and  had  an  intellectual  flavor.  The  denizens 
were  neither  economic  sufferers  nor  economic  op 
pressors,  but  belonged  to  the  fluider  parts  of  the 
middling  class,  and  were  free  enough  both  from 
poverty  and  wealth  to  do  with  themselves  after  their 
own  human  leanings. 

As  for  our  friend,  his  lingering  glance  and  the 


A  Liberal  Experience  51 

lucid  humanity  in  it  broke  through  the  reserve  of  a 
good  many  of  his  neighbors.  Among  themselves 
there  was  little  enough  intercourse;  the  hard  con 
sciousness  of  a  settled  society  held  them  apart.  But 
the  American  was  outside  of  it.  He  had  nothing 
about  him  but  his  common  humanity;  he  had  no 
ramifications;  he  did  not  signify  beyond  the  signifi 
cance  of  his  presence.  And  because  he  was  outside 
of  it  he  was,  humanly  speaking,  let  more  into  it  than 
they  themselves. 

The  secret  of  his  glance  was,  perhaps,  that  it  re 
vealed  interest  without  impertinence,  and  personal 
distinction  without  the  consciousness  of  class.  It 
dealt  out  none  of  the  chagrins  that  make  social  com 
parisons  so  much  harder  to  bear  than  personal.  At 
home  the  irony  of  his  tongue  had  countered  the 
sympathy  and  simplicity  of  his  eye,  but  at  home, 
for  him  too,  the  eternal  responsibility  for  the  quality 
of  life  had  edged  and  roughened  many  of  his  gentler 
qualities.  Here,  however,  he  was  detached,  and 
life  was  a  spectacle,  and  he  could  fall  into  the  very 
simple  bent  of  his  very  human  nature.  There  was 
a  sense  of  relief  in  this  irresponsibility  —  so  pleasant 
a  relief  that  at  times  he  plunged  back  into  his  old 
militant  scorns  with  a  vigour  that  came  from  a 
conscience  alarmed  at  its  own  relaxation. 

A  sympathetic  serenity,  however,  was  his  normal 
mood;  his  mind  was  fallow.  He  read,  sometimes  in 
his  own  room  and  sometimes  under  the  dome  of  the 
Museum,  walked  interminably  in  the  streets,  sat  in 
the  crescent  that  stretched  before  the  Terrace,  and 
passively  cultivated  the  seeds  of  acquaintance  that 
blew  into  his  garden. 


52  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

And  slowly,  as  summer  passed  and  autumn  came 
in,  two  impressions  gathered  weight  and  momentum 
in  his  mind.  Sometimes  as  he  left  the  Museum  at 
the  approach  of  dusk  and  turned  eastward  toward 
the  City  he  gave  a  loose  to  his  legs,  and  with  a  mind 
full  of  the  echoes  of  ten  centuries  of  life  that  had 
resounded  on  that  spot,  let  them  thread  the  intricate 
pattern,  so  planless  and  so  human  —  street  and  lane, 
flagged  passage,  hole  in  the  wall  —  which  men  had 
drawn  there  so  impersonally  under  the  drive  of  mo 
mentary  needs  that  the  triter  phrase  time  seemed 
to  be  truer  than  men  to  name  the  workman  and  point 
the  moral  of  the  tale. 

In  a  little  passage  off  Cheapside  there  was  a  leg 
less  beggar  whom  he  found  altogether  loquacious  and 
delightful,  and  whom  he  came  to  like  so  well  for  the 
shrewd  humour  with  which  he  confronted  good  for 
tune  and  bad,  that  one  day,  in  a  mood  that  he  after 
ward  knew  to  be  born  of  his  own  simplicity,  he 
gathered  together  an  elaborate  stock  of  the  strings 
and  pencils  that  the  cripple  used,  to  keep  himself 
inside  the  law,  and  sent  them  secretly  by  messenger 
to  the  accustomed  corner.  He  never  saw  them 
again.  But  when  next  he  stood  against  the  wall  of 
the  passage  watching  the  crowd  and  talking  at  odd 
moments  down  into  the  cocked  ears  below  him,  he 
heard  in  terms  of  gay  and  sophisticated  irony  the 
tale  of  his  own  naivete. 

"A  good  'earted  fool  'e  was,  sir,  whoever  'e  was, 
but  a  fool  just  the  same.  'Arf  a  day  more  and  crool 
ruin  'd  a  'ad  me.  'E  don't  know  'is  economics,  'e 
don't." 

Bagdad  or  London,  age  of  romance  or  dismal  sci- 


A  Liberal   Experience  53 

ence  —  what  matter  was  it?  Human  nature  re 
mained  unchanged. 

To  stand  there  at  that  thronged  corner  of  a  bye 
street,  and  to  watch  faces;  to  catch  fragments  of 
talk,  of  despairs,  of  passions,  of  ribaldry  and  hope; 
to  see  beneath  the  negligible  cut  of  altered  styles 
the  immemorial  types  —  fishwife,  porter,  coster,  pub 
lican,  lean  sharper  of  the  law,  saintly-eyed  priests, 
cripples  from  the  wars,  pale  dapper  clerks,  robber 
barons  of  the  Castle  or  die  Street,  painted  women; 
or  to  sit  in  dingy  taverns  and  hear  the  wranglings  of 
immemorial  prejudice,  obstinate  and  passionate  over 
immemorial  beer;  or  in  urbaner  ordinaries  and  catch 
the  ancient  parochial  platitudes  of  life  and  death,  of 
egotism,  of  caste,  of  the  neglect  of  merit  —  to  ob 
serve  all  this  with  sympathy  and  detachment  was 
to  lose  track  of  the  century  and  feel  the  slow  inertia 
of  the  bulk  of  human  life. 

At  such  moments  the  recollection  of  his  readings, 
through  years  in  his  library  at  home,  and  more  re 
cently  under  the  dome  of  the  Museum,  took  on  a 
peculiar  light.  It  was  a  light  that  was  starry  in  its 
lucid  and  utter  detachment.  Plato,  Jesus,  Anto 
ninus,  Dante,  St.  Francis,  Pascal,  Carlyle  —  the  list 
indeed  was  long,  but  they  stood  out  sharply  against 
the  great  immensity  of  the  night.  In  them,  and  in 
the  stream  of  their  tradition,  was  matter  to  make 
over  a  world  that  had  been  more  rational  and  more 
kind.  What  more,  or  better,  was  to  be  said  to  the 
reasoning  mind  or  the  pitying  heart?  And  how  little 
they  had  prevailed  with  the  great  turgid  stream  of 
life! 

In  his  earlier  and  lonelier  days  in  London  such 


54  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

visions  were  frequent  enough  to  have  become  im 
pressive.  He  owned  grudgingly  their  truth,  and  saw 
in  them  the  sad  bidding  to  infinite  and  pitying  pa 
tience.  But  though  he  longed  to  drag  his  Liberal 
friends  to  that  beggar's  corner  and  bring  home  to 
them  the  unchanging  spectacle  and  humble  their 
confident  eagerness,  he  caught  also  for  his  own 
warning  the  odor  of  poppies  that  clung  about  such 
br  codings. 

It  was  with  some  violence  to  his  mood,  therefore, 
that  he  took  himself  humorously  in  hand.  The  sense 
of  the  inveterate  inertia  of  the  mass  of  life  still  went 
with  him,  ground  note  of  a  complex  harmony;  but 
he  turned  himself  back  to  his  terrace  with  the  recol 
lection  of  his  own  fugitive  littleness,  and  reminders 
that  he  was  of  his  own  time,  and  that  the  problem 
of  his  own  time  was  the  fusing  of  those  two  streams, 
dark  and  light.  That,  at  least,  was  the  proposal  of 
the  Liberals;  and  it  was  with  them  that  he  was  just 
now  concerned. 

He  began  now  to  see  more  sharply  the  terms  of 
his  problem.  If  the  Liberals  held  out  hopes  that  in 
the  fusion  it  should  be  the  light  that  had  the  better 
of  it  and  not  the  dark,  he  had,  here  on  the  Terrace, 
something  significant  to  watch  —  something  of  the 
bare  terms  of  the  actual  process.  For  in  the  course 
of  his  first  months  there  he  had  caught  the  quality 
of  his  neighbourhood.  It  was  intelligent;  it  was 
Liberal,  it  was  in  an  especial  degree  what  the  Lib 
erals  wanted  to  make  of  the  whole  mass  —  it  was 
economically  free.  He  had  but  a  little  while  before 
been  inclined  to  complain  that  Liberalism  had 
nothing  else  at  the  bottom  of  its  bag.  But  now  he 


A  Liberal  Experience  55 

was  not  so  confident  of  his  old  assurances;  at  all 
events  he  was  more  tolerant  of  the  Liberal  faith  that 
given  economic  freedom  the  rest  would  follow.  And 
so  he  set  about  to  observe  what,  stripped  of  the 
adventitious  and  the  eccentric,  typically  did  follow 
with  these  men  and  women  whom  Liberalism  had 
finished  with.  He  wanted,  above  everything,  to  be 
actual.  If  the  case  of  the  majority  was  to  be 
grounded  on  the  fact,  the  fact  was  the  thing  to  be 
looked  at.  And  here  was  a  significant  sample  of  the 
fact. 

There  was  enough  humour  in  him,  of  a  self- 
directed  and  ironic  kind,  to  keep  his  thinking  sane, 
and  the  inevitable  pride  of  perception  never  quite 
deceived  him  into  a  belief  that  his  score  of  motley 
neighbours  were  an  ultimate  picture  of  the  Liberal 
accomplishment.  But  his  humour  could  work  both 
ways,  and  if  he  demanded  that  the  counters  of  his 
own  ideas  should  be  fleshly  and  real,  he  demanded  no 
less  of  the  Liberals  themselves.  And  it  seemed  to 
him,  then  and  afterwards,  that  though  the  Liberals 
showed  a  throbbing  sense  of  reality  in  conceiving 
their  sympathies,  and  winning  the  sympathies  of 
others,  there  was  something  a  little  detached  and 
abstract  about  their  thinking  in  the  large.  Some  of 
their  phrases  —  the  average,  the  will  of  the  people, 
majority  opinion  —  seemed  to  him  to  have  got  their 
warmth  rather  from  the  emotions  that  made  the 
Liberal  motives  than  from  a  warm  reality  in  the  con 
ceptions  themselves.  Their  moral  substance  dis 
solved  under  concrete  inspection.  Their  cold  statis 
tical  values  seemed  far  enough  removed  from  the 
personal  immediacy  of  the  very  human  problem  that 
politics  at  its  best  set  out  to  solve. 


56  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

What  he  saw  there  on  the  Terrace  was  that  he  had, 
if  not  an  equivalence  of  the  Liberal  goal,  at  least  a 
spectacle  that  could  keep  warmth  and  reality  in  his 
phrases.  If  they  were,  these  neighbors  of  his,  quite 
startlingly  individual,  and  concretely  set  up  on  their 
own  legs,  and  set  going  by  their  own  spontaneities, 
he  detected  the  last  touch  of  their  very  human 
reality  in  their  proneness  to  fall  into  human  ten 
dencies.  For  one  thing  they  were  all  Liberals.  That 
was,  indeed,  almost  the  only  thing  that  they  had  in 
common,  but  they  did  separately  manage  to  fall  into 
many  of  the  grooves  and  ruts  of  the  time.  If  they 
did  not  violate  reality  by  being  generic  abstractions, 
neither  did  they  violate  it  by  being  unique.  They 
were  knowably  human,  and  quite  humanly  sociable, 
and  lonely,  and  anxious  to  accrue  somewhere,  to 
belong  to  something  bigger  than  themselves,  to  give 
some  significance  to  the  grievous  isolation  of  indi 
viduality. 

How  far  they  blew  with  the  winds  of  opinion  in 
England  he  could  hardly  venture  to  say.  Aristo 
cratic  tradition  there  still  had  vitality.  But  he  knew 
his  own  country,  and  as  he  looked  about  him  at  that 
London  terrace,  he  seemed  to  see,  beneath  the  sur 
face,  something  of  the  array  of  moral  and  intellectual 
diversity  that  touched  to  the  life  his  picture  of  Lib 
eral  America. 

A  September  fog  —  his  first  fog  in  London  —  was 
enriched  in  its  associations,  if  not  made  more  en 
durable,  by  what  at  home  would  have  been  a  painful 
but  unromantic  twinge  of  rheumatism.  Here,  how 
ever,  he  felt  entitled  to  the  honors  of  gout,  and  bore 
himself  between  twinges  with  a  humorous  sense  of 


A  Liberal   Experience  57 

this  visitation  as  a  thing  of  quite  literary  quality. 
There  was  a  more  substantial  reward  in  it,  however, 
in  the  fact  that  it  brought  the  beginning  of  a  new  and 
more  intimate  stage  in  his  acquaintance  with  the 
curious  medley  in  the  Terrace.  The  garrulous  sym 
pathy  of  his  landlady,  no  doubt,  spread  the  rumor 
that  the  poor  American  gentleman  was  laid  by  with 
the  more  euphemistic  malady.  He  became  promptly 
the  object  of  much  good  feeling  and  not  a  few  acts 
of  kindness.  They  came  to  him,  these  kindly  neigh 
bors,  with  the  warrant  of  previous  conversations 
in  the  lounge,  and  with  the  tradition  of  his  Ameri 
canism  to  excuse  their  unreserve.  They  came  singly, 
for  they  held  aloof  from  each  other,  and  came  again, 
finding  in  him  a  disinterested  attentiveness  that  was 
soothing  to  their  egotisms.  They  talked  about 
themselves,  as  interesting  men  do,  and  as  uninterest 
ing  men  do,  and  they  were  often  intimate  in  the  im 
personal  manner  of  people  who  are  immersed  in 
special  ways  of  judging  the  world. 

In  the  semi-detachment  that  comes  with  chronic 
and  not  too  acute  pain  in  a  remote  member,  he 
watched  the  little  drama  of  conflicting  ideas  that 
the  house  was  staging  around  him,  the  rasping  an 
tagonisms  implied  and  expressed  in  their  allusions  to 
each  other,  their  mutual  avoidances  and  constraints. 
So  that  his  days  of  confinement,  when  he  came  to 
look  back  on  them,  took  on  the  colors  of  quick  and 
significant  action.  His  memory  of  it  all  was  no 
doubt  highly  selective,  but  the  stuff  that  he  found 
in  it  was  clearly  enough  present  in  the  reality. 

The  first  one  to  knock  timidly  at  his  door  was  a 
woman.  She  lived  in  a  little  back  room  on  his  own 


58  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

floor,  overlooking  an  area  and  a  whitewashed  wall. 
Twenty  years  before,  when  she  was  twenty,  she  had 
written  a  novel,  Hearts  Aflame;  a  copy  of  it  lay 
now,  its  lavender  boards  soiled  and  broken,  on  the 
parlour  table  below.  She  had  never  got  another 
published.  Soon  the  world  had  begun  to  frighten 
her,  and  she  had  taken  to  "metaphysics."  Her  face 
was  thin  and  the  veins  showed  on  the  meager  cheeks, 
but  there  were  delicate  lips  and  dark  eyes  that  still 
showed  the  old  dreams  that  once  at  least,  and  in  the 
cold  world  of  print,  had  come  true  for  her.  Now 
her  eyes  hovered  and  never  came  to  rest.  With  a 
rustle  of  black  taffeta  she  fluttered  in  at  the  bidding 
that  answered  her  knock,  unheedful,  in  the  feverish 
elevation  of  her  mission,  of  the  dressing  gown  and 
the  bandaged  foot  that  for  a  brief  moment  embar 
rassed  her  host. 

"Have  you  tried  metaphysics?"  she  asked 
abruptly,  upright  and  tentative  in  the  chair  he 
offered. 

He  answered  no,  hardly  aware  of  her  meaning,  and 
she  hurried  on.  She  was  sure  it  was  medicine  that 
kept  him  ill,  for  all  sickness  and  all  evil  were  only 
illusions.  She  murmured  on  vaguely  about  the  good 
ness  of  God,  the  control  of  matter  by  mind,  and  the 
unreality  of  material  things.  And  then  she  came 
back  to  medicine,  which  somehow  seemed  the  great 
est  evil  of  all,  and  terribly  real. 

"You  must  ask  me  questions,"  she  said.  "It 
isn't  easy  to  grasp  it  all  at  once." 

What  could  he  ask?  He  inquired  whether  she 
wore  a  cloak  in  winter,  had  a  fire  in  her  room, 
whether  she  ate.  And  she  answered  very  gently, 


A  Liberal  Experience  59 

catching  the  drift,  "We  haven't  got  so  far  as  that, 
yet." 

After  a  while,  when  he  was  silent,  she  added,  "It 
is  a  religion;  it  is  very  sacred."  And  then  more  in 
tensely  and  a  little  bitterly,  "I  am  reviled  here.  I 
have  spoken  to  them  all,  as  I  must,  mustn't  I,  seeing 
how  they  suffer  from  their  lack  of  faith.  But  they 
go  on  with  their  little  human  schemes  to  make  a 
bad  world  better,  when  all  the  time  they  keep  it 
evil  by  thinking  it  evil." 

Someone  knocked  at  the  door,  and  the  kitchen 
slavey  pushed  into  the  room  with  a  tray  of  tea 
things.  When  the  pale,  slatternly  little  maid  had 
slid  away  to  double  her  provision  the  two  were 
silent.  Something  in  the  pitiable  hopelessness  of 
this  apparition  jarred  on  the  visitor's  last  note  and 
made  it  hard  to  resume.  Before  the  return  of  the 
forlorn  little  wretch  with  fresh  supplies,  another 
knock  brought  in  other  visitors.  The  fluttering 
guest  rose  and  said  she  must  go,  with  a  baffled  ges 
ture  that  made  her  going  almost  a  flight. 

The  new  comers  were  a  pair  of  biologists  from 
overhead,  man  and  wife.  They  had  stopped  in, 
they  said,  on  their  way  home,  the  fog  having  put 
an  end  to  work.  They  had  heard  that  he  was  laid 
up.  There  was  a  hesitation  in  their  manner  that 
the  departed  guest  was  clearly  accountable  for,  and 
a  constraint  set  in  that  even  tea  with  its  ancient 
sociability  —  it  had  been  finally  mustered  for  three 
—  did  little  to  relieve.  Only  the  clinking  resur 
gence  of  the  medicine  bottle  put  them  wholly  at 
their  ease  and  gave  them  a  point  of  contact. 

The  man  was  young,  with  uncouth,  roomy  clothes, 


6o  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

a  sprawling  figure,  and  a  droning  voice.  But  he 
had  hands  that  were  delicate,  slender,  and  deft  like 
a  woman's,  and  eyes  that  needed  no  supplement  of 
feature  —  wide  apart,  and  keen  or  dreaming  as  the 
talk  shifted  from  fact  to  vision  or  vision  to  fact.  His 
wife  was  a  girl  in  years,  plain  and  calm  and  compe 
tent,  speaking  to  the  subject  without  the  feminine 
consciousness  of  the  listener.  They  had  met  and 
loved  in  a  laboratory,  and  had  gone  out  one  afternoon 
and  been  married  by  a  magistrate.  The  quiet  ro 
mance  of  their  union  still  burned  in  their  eyes  and 
told  in  their  gestures,  whether  they  talked,  as  they 
did,  of  political  hopes,  or  of  the  large  dreams  of 
their  science. 

When  medicine  was  disposed  of  and  tobacco  was 
produced  they  settled  themselves  comfortably,  di 
vining  the  welcome  in  reaction  from  their  momen 
tary  doubts.  They  both  smoked,  the  man  nervously, 
and  his  wife  with  a  sedative  calm  at  once  homelike 
and  revolutionary. 

"We're  a  queer  lot  here,"  the  biologist  mused,  and 
his  wife  added,  "I  dare  say  you've  had  a  taste  of  us." 

"I  shall  hate  it  when  I  have  to  go,"  our  friend  re 
turned  heartily. 

"They're  good-hearted  enough,"  the  scientist  went 
on.  "And  if  they'd  stop  there  it  would  be  a  good 
thing  for  England.  Only  they  won't.  They  try  to 
think.  Look  at  them.  No,  I'm  not  personal  —  it's 
just  because  they  take  up  these  cults  and  get  run 
away  with  that  it  isn't  like  talking  scandal  to  speak 
of  them.  They  move  like  puppets;  somehow  they're 
not  their  own  men.  And  when  you  speak  of  them 
you're  speaking  of  something  impersonal  and 
threatening  —  disintegrating." 


A  Liberal   Experience  61 

He  omitted  courteously  the  guest  who  had  just 
gone,  but  sketched  out  others  in  the  house  and  set 
them  forth  in  clashing  collocation  —  a  Bergsonian 
who  was  for  reasoning  away  the  reason,  an  aesthete 
who  was  for  sentimentalizing  life,  a  pedagogue  with  a 
modernistic  cult  of  spontaneity,  a  socialist  with  a 
dream  of  industrial  bureaucracy,  a  social  worker 
drunk  with  a  vision  of  syndicalist  overthrow,  and 
worst  of  all  the  eternal  gentleman  with  his  static, 
visionless  immaculacy  and  his  hopeless  content  with 
polite  manners,  polite  learning,  polite  charity,  polite 
inanity.  There  they  were,  threatening  between  them 
to  smash  the  only  hope  of  unity  that  reason  held  out 
for  the  future  of  poor  England  —  and  poor  America, 
for  that  matter.  That  only  hope  was  science.  Then 
he  sprawled  at  reflective  length  in  his  chair  and 
launched  the  great  scientific  dream,  the  praise  of  its 
discipline,  the  vision  of  its  gradual  absorption  of  all 
that  was  now  going  at  loose  ends  under  the  care  of 
literature,  and  morals,  and  politics,  and  art. 

They  left  at  the  appearance  of  the  dinner  tray, 
and  the  doubts  that  were  hovering  in  our  friend's 
mind  as  to  the  all-sufficiency  of  science  to  take  care 
of  many  of  men's  aspirations  remained  there  undi- 
vulged.  He  promised  himself  to  review  them  over 
his  coffee  and  cigar,  but  his  coffee  and  cigar  were 
shared  by  the  anti-intellectualist  and  it  was  impos 
sible  to  share  with  this  common  enemy  the  ironies 
that  he  had  for  science.  For  those  ironies,  after  all, 
were  sympathetic  and  not  fundamentally  hostile. 

The  new  visitor,  with  the  prospect  of  two  fair 
hours  before  him,  set  out  to  shatter  the  reason  with 
irrefragible  logic.  The  demonstration  went  forward 


62  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

apace,  step  by  step,  interrupted  now  and  again  by 
inquiring  visitors,  who  glanced  at  the  guest  and 
would  not  stay,  and  ended  with  the  reason  quite  in 
the  ruck  and  discard  of  the  world's  rushing  progress 
through  time. 

The  loneliness  of  the  second  morning  of  confine 
ment  was  relieved  by  quite  his  most  welcome  visi 
tor.  He  was  a  young  man  of  a  reflective  turn  and 
greying  temples,  who  came  toward  noon  with  a  mess 
of  sausages,  and  stayed  to  reveal  a  very  endearing 
nature.  He  was  a  writer  on  Liberal  doctrines,  and 
eked  out  a  living  in  several  minor  lectureships.  Our 
friend  amused  himself  by  picturing  him  as  a  modern 
version  of  the  old  Whig  pamphleteer.  But  the 
type  had  changed,  in  externals  at  least.  In  place  of 
the  old  blind  partisanship  and  the  old  emotional  loy 
alty  that  went  with  the  old  ideas,  there  was  the  clear, 
rational  coolness  that  consorted  with  the  term 
science,  which  he  used  to  designate  his  political  the 
ories  with.  The  change  was  consistent  with  the 
change  from  the  moral  to  the  economic  ends  to  which 
Liberal  theory  had  been  so  largely  reduced.  It  was 
beneath  this  exterior,  however,  that  the  old  Whig 
still  smouldered  —  in  a  burning  loyalty  to  the  one 
human  idea  that  lay,  by  faith,  in  the  Liberal  prin 
ciple  —  the  belief  in  the  majority.  He  had  a  gen 
erous  hatred  of  compulsion,  a  hatred  that  in  someone 
less  ardent,  a  little  more  aloof,  would  have  played 
hob  with  his  modern  Liberal  programme  of  sweeping 
regulation  and  restriction.  His  ideas  were  tolerantly 
put,  but  there  was  a  brooding  undertone  running 
through  them,  a  kind  of  mute  anger  at  the  life  at  his 
elbow,  at  the  perverse  spectacle  of  mad  divergence 
that  kept  men  so  unsympathetically  apart. 


A  Liberal  Experience  63 

"For  all  our  interests,  our  best  interests,"  he  said, 
"are  one,  you  know,  common,  co-operative.  And 
yet,  look  at  us  here " 

But  when  the  pedagogue,  with  his  theories  of 
spontaneity  in  education,  came  in,  he  himself  was 
fain  to  go.  The  spectacle  of  that  demoralizer  of 
common  foundations  and  common  standards  was 
too  much  for  his  patience  to  bear. 

Others  dropped  in  on  that  day  and  the  next  in  a 
bright  stream  of  clashing  colours  —  the  syndicalist 
with  his  elan  vital,  the  socialist  with  his  rational, 
hard,  schematic,  but  beautiful  Utopia,  an  Anglican 
priest  with  brooding  loyalty  to  a  waning  cause. 

It  was  on  the  fourth  day,  when  a  warm  sun  and  a 
sudden  relief  from  his  malady  took  him  out  into 
the  crescent,  that  he  met  the  aesthetic  critic  of  whom 
the  scientist  had  spoken  —  a  short  stocky  man 
dressed  always,  morning  and  evening,  in  a  jaunty 
Norfolk  jacket  with  a  flare,  a  Windsor  tie,  and  ex 
traordinarily  stout  boots.  The  morning  invited  talk, 
and  the  sun,  or  a  native  bent,  or  both,  charmed  out 
of  the  little  man  the  eccentric  tale  of  his  own  phil 
osophy. 

He  had  got  demd  sick,  he  said,  of  propriety.  He 
had  seen  it  until  all  the  world  had  begun  to  look  like 
a  box  of  puppets  with  strings  pulled  by  a  machine, 
forever  the  same,  without  variation,  without  intelli 
gence,  without  imagination.  He'd  looked  behind 
for  the  operator.  Dead!  He'd  looked  for  the  in 
ventor.  Dead,  too!  He'd  then  got  out  of  the  box 
himself,  and  life  was  a  jolly  bit  more  like  it  outside. 
Here  he  was,  quite  alive,  and  he  knew  it  because 
everything  that  came  into  his  mind  was  something 


64  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

new.  He  had  chucked  the  machine  for  good  and 
all.  What  he  was  looking  for  was  life,  and  life  was 
spontaneous  —  not  the  same  thing  over  and  over. 
As  for  laws,  they  were  the  joke  of  some  devil  who 
wanted  things  to  happen  always  the  same  way. 
Artists  were  the  people  with  life  as  he  understood  it. 
They  needed  no  laws;  the  instinct  of  beauty  kept 
them  from  anything  nasty.  And  then  he  got  on  to 
his  scheme  for  social  regeneration  —  a  kind  of  Lib 
eral  anarchy  mitigated  by  aesthetics  and  propelled 
by  impulse. 

It  was  a  little  inconsistent  that,  forgetting  his 
principles  for  the  moment,  he  should  respond  to  his 
own  clean  impulses  and  damn  the  uglifying  verses  of 
the  poet  who  lived  on  the  top  floor  of  the  Terrace, 
and  whom  our  friend  had  seen  once  or  twice  in  the 
passage.  For  himself,  the  critic  did  the  arts  for  an 
afternoon  paper  —  and  his  thumb  jerked  toward  the 
villa  that  flanked  the  Terrace.  He  told  then  about 
"Old  Flash,"  his  proprietor,  owner  of  a  half-penny 
sheet  in  Fleet  Street,  that  said  wicked  things  about 
the  aristocracy  at  seductive  length,  and  illustrated 
with  much  bare  flesh  from  the  drawing-rooms  and 
the  music  halls. 

He  left  our  friend  to  musings  about  "Old  Flash." 
He  remembered  now  to  have  seen  that  gentleman 
from  his  own  window  that  overlooked  the  garden 
of  the  villa.  The  villa  itself  was  a  matter  of  flaming 
riches  and  flaming  taste,  with  footman  and  butler 
and  coachman  in  incredible  livery.  But  the  garden 
belonged  to  another  world,  and  answered  to  the  care 
of  a  spare  and  bandy  Weshman  in  inalienable  shirt 
sleeves  and  flat  cap.  It  was  there,  in  the  summer, 


A  Liberal   Experience  65 

that  he  had  seen  a  boy  of  ten  for  the  first  time  back 
from  school,  thin  and  pale,  and  going  about  from 
spot  to  spot  watching  the  gardener  with  wistful  eyes. 
Later  the  family  were  on  the  wing  for  Brighton,  and 
the  boy  was  in  the  garden  going  about  saying  good- 
by  to  his  pony  and  his  rabbit  and  his  dog.  When 
they  found  him  he  was  standing  before  a  prickly  cac 
tus  that  he  had  brought  from  school  in  his  pocket 
and  planted  in  a  corner.  There  was  language  from 
the  pair  in  the  French  window,  father  and  mother. 
It  came  across  the  pleasant  shrubbery  harshly  and 
brutally,  and  our  friend,  from  his  own  window,  saw 
the  boy's  shoulders  shrink  together  as  he  turned  and 
went  into  the  house.  And  now  as  he  thought  back 
on  this  incident  that  had  touched  him  so  much  then, 
it  became  acutely  significant.  His  habit,  right  or 
wrong,  was  to  generalize  the  color  of  life,  to  find  in 
the  private  springs  of  personal  character  the  subtle 
indications  of  the  quality  of  large  affairs.  There 
was  something  sinister,  therefore,  in  this  incident,  as 
he  brooded  upon  it.  His  idea  spread  from  the  single 
character  whom  he  had  seen  in  the  French  window, 
out  to  the  infinite  repetitions  of  it  in  that  half-penny 
sheet  dropping  their  indirect  suggestions,  and  tread 
ing  them  down  day  after  day  into  the  minds,  dull  or 
receptive,  that  made  up  majorities. 

A  kind  of  baffled,  helpless  impotence  seized  him 
at  the  thought  of  the  uncontrollable  forces  at  work 
against  the  efforts,  generous  but  weak,  of  those  who, 
like  his  friend  of  the  sausages,  dreamed  of  a  people 
united  in  a  single  intelligent  purpose  and  working 
together  to  a  single  intelligent  end. 

He  got  up  to  walk  off  his  restlessness.    A  distant 


66  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

church  bell  called  back  to  him  suddenly  out  of  the 
past  an  older  and  larger  and  serener  dream  of  an  in 
fluence  reaching  out  to  all  men,  and  working  upon 
them  from  within  to  bring  them  together  with  a 
common  and  moving  impulse.  He  had  a  fleeting 
sense  that  only  so,  working  through  character  to 
outer  expressions  of  it  in  social  relations,  could  any 
reform  ever  make  over  the  life  they  were  all  trying 
so  desperately  to  make  over.  The  turmoil  of  struggle 
to  mold  it  from  without,  to  regulate  the  expressions 
themselves,  leaving  the  character  untouched,  or 
touched  only  with  the  restive  animosities  of  restraint, 
struck  him  as  tremendously,  desperately  futile. 

It  was  perhaps  this  sense  that  led  him,  a  few  min 
utes  later,  to  fall  in  step  by  genial  invitation  with 
a  minister  who  cogitated  his  sermons  there,  up  and 
down  on  the  gravel.  In  a  few  more  minutes  he  was 
listening  to  the  curious  tale  of  that  shift  from  Chris 
tianity  to  economics  that  was  going  on  in  the 
churches  —  perhaps  more  in  America  than  in  Eng 
land  —  in  the  name  of  progress. 

"Change  and  evolution  are  the  law  of  life,"  he 
heard  the  ministerial  voice  saying  by  his  side,  and  it 
came  to  him  stridently  across  the  quiet  of  his  serener 
vision  of  a  moment  before.  "And  if  it  is  true  that 
Jesus  did  look  upon  possession  as  an  evil  and 
poverty  as  a  good,  still  we  may  hardly  cling  to  ideas 
that  are  outgrown.  Christianity  is  not  static;  if 
it  is  to  live  it  must  grow  with  the  progress  of  ideas." 

He  was  rational  and  hearty  and  disposed  to  talk. 
Our  friend  put  the  point  of  his  doubts  to  him. 

"It  is  still  possible,  though,"  he  said,  "to  despise 
riches  and  put  one's  heart  on  other  things.  Mightn't 
that  attitude  still  deserve  to  be  called  Christianity?" 


A  Liberal  Experience  67 

"Historically,  perhaps,"  the  other  returned.  "But 
that  would  be  to  stand  still." 

"But  why,  then,"  our  friend  pursued,  "keep  to 
the  old  term?  There  is  a  bit  of  stability  in  the  name 
that  might  be  got  rid  of." 

The  answer  was  hard  to  put  at  once,  delicately 
and  directly,  but  it  came  at  last,  out  of  many  words, 
that  to  give  up  the  term  Christianity  would  be  to  lose 
much  of  the  credit  that  the  centuries  had  accumu 
lated  about  the  sacred  name. 

Our  friend  crept  back  to  his  room  and  meditated. 

"There  they  are,"  he  mused,  almost  a  year  after 
wards,  in  a  letter  to  the  friend  for  whom  he  had 
accumulated  this  gallery  of  portraits.  "Do  you 
like  them?  For  myself  I  find  myself  more  tolerant 
as  I  grow  older,  though  I  have  a  good  deal  of  sym 
pathy  for  the  bitterness  of  Burke  in  his  old  age.  I 
suppose  it  is  easier  for  us,  who  hate  the  same  things, 
to  take  them  more  casually;  we  have  grown  up  with 
them.  At  all  events,  when  I  come  to  give  up  my 
rooms  —  shut  up  my  box  of  puppets,  as  the  aesthete 
would  have  it  —  I  shall  go  away  with  a  good  deal  of 
the  desolation  that  conies  at  parting. 

"But  I've  watched  the  comedy  almost  out;  they've 
begun  to  reappear  in  the  same  parts,  and  repeat  the 
same  speeches,  with  sincerity  indeed  —  the  sincerity 
that  makes  them  so  likable  —  but  each  one  with 
the  inner  twist  that  sends  him  off  on  his  own  tangent 
to  add  his  own  disorder  to  the  great  confusion. 
If  it  were  only  a  London  terrace  I  could  take  them 
aesthetically,  as  the  Bergsonian  is  so  fond  of  recom 
mending,  and  I  could  smile  and  call  quits.  But  they 


68  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

are  more  than  a  London  terrace.  I  have  eaten  their 
chops  and  drunk  their  wine  and  their  beer,  and  I 
know  how  separately  real  they  are.  But  they  are 
representative  none  the  less. 

"Have  I  played  them  a  little  false,  to  have  watched 
them,  to  let  them  talk,  and  thus  to  be  writing  to 
you  about  them.  I  hope  not.  If  I've  looked  on  at 
the  play  it  has  been  with  sympathy,  and  if  I  have 
been  amused,  or  found  them  wanting,  it  was  no  part 
of  mine  to  set  up  as  their  director.  Even  here  I 
have  no  wish  to  ridicule  them.  But  I  have  wanted 
answers  to  certain  questions,  and  I've  let  them  play 
on  and  the  answers  have  come  out.  I  have  seen 
them  here,  irreconcilable,  with  nothing  but  their  Lib 
eralism  in  common  —  and  only  that  in  common  I 
suspect  because  it  has  no  ideas  to  disturb  them  — 
without  an  education  in  common,  without  common 
intellectual  standards,  without  common  ethical  stan 
dards,  inimical  to  each  other.  And  I  have  asked 
them,  silently,  what  they  themselves  actually  believe, 
in  the  one  thing  that  they  can  assert  to  be  common 
to  their  social  philosophy  —  their  belief  in  majority 
opinion. 

"Well,  they  don't  believe  in  majority  opinion. 

"  'You  are  aware,  sir,'  the  woman  with  the  fright 
ened  eyes  said  to  me,  one  day  as  we  sat  alone  in  the 
lounge,  'that  we  are  few  here.  I  understand  that  we 
are  many  in  your  country.  But  here  we  are  few,  and 
little  understood.  Only  yesterday  a  meeting  was 
mobbed  in  Kent,  and  everywhere  we  are  ridiculed. 
But  for  us  who  know  that  God  in  His  goodness  could 
create  no  evil,  such  things  only  strengthen  us  in 
our  faith.' 


A  Liberal  Experience  69 

"  'God  bless  you  sir/  the  jaunty,  good-souled 
aesthete  said  on  another  occasion,  'they're  a  jolly 
prim  lot,  I  tell  you.  I  can't  help  liking  them,  for 
they're  my  own  people,  but  they're  as  near  mum 
mies  as  they  can  be  in  this  climate.  The  human 
atmosphere  here  is  as  dry  as  Egypt.' 

"I  suggested  the  great  English  humourists. 

"  'Ah/  he  returned,  'the  reason  England's  had  so 
many  great  humourists  is  because  she's  had  so  many 
good  subjects.  We  have  some  intelligent  men,  you 
know,  and  they  can't  help  seeing.  But  the  run  of 
them  —  ah,  we  go  to  France  for  intelligence  —  or  I 
dare  say  America,'  he  added  out  of  his  goodness. 

"  'Our  trouble  is,'  the  scientist  explained,  'that 
every  upstart  wants  his  son  to  be  a  gentleman,  and 
sends  him  off  to  a  polite  school  where  he  is  to  get  a 
jumble  of  dead  languages  and  dead  knowledge.  It 
isn't  only  Oxford  and  Cambridge  that  are  the  curse 
of  English  education,  but  every  public  school  and  all 
the  little  private  ones  that  ape  them  and  pander  to 
the  snobbish  ambition  of  people  on  the  make.  A 
few  here  and  there  break  loose  and  find  their  way 
into  science.  But  it's  a  kind  of  accident  with  us. 
Our  education  is  rotten.  The  worst  of  it  is  that  it's 
the  exact  expression  of  our  intelligence.  By  and 
large,  you  know.' 

"Shall  I  go  on,  or  does  it  grow  monotonous? 

"  'There  are  so  few,'  the  social  worker  complained 
sadly,  'who  really  are  interested.  There's  a  great 
deal  of  talk  and  a  great  deal  of  polite  and  fashion 
able  slumming,  but  only  a  few  people  really  care. 
When  you  go  down  into  the  East  End  and  see  the 
life  of  it  and  the  mass  of  it,  it  is  overwhelming  — 


7O  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

the  sense  of  all  that  is  to  be  done,  and  the  sense 
that  over  there  to  the  West  and  out  through  the 
whole  country  those  others  are  shutting  themselves 
off  from  a  knowledge  of  conditions  here,  or  if  they 
know  are  shutting  their  hearts  against  a  care  for 
them.  Here  among  ourselves  sometimes  we  try  to 
believe  that  we  have  awakaned  the  world  to  the 
crime  of  all  this  poverty  and  suffering.  We  read  our 
own  papers  and  go  to  our  own  meetings,  and  fill  up 
our  lives  with  it  till  we  get  to  thinking  that  all  the 
world  is  as  alive  to  it  as  we  are.  But  we  have  only 
to  look  off  to  the  horizon  to  see  that  the  world  goes 
on  much  as  ever,  indifferent,  each  man  the  center  of 
his  own  universe.' 

"  'You  mustn't  listen  to  most  talkers  about  social 
ism,'  said  the  socialist.  'They  give  you  a  wrong 
notion  altogether.  They  don't  go  to  the  heart  of  it; 
they  want  more  than  they've  got,  and  socialism  looks 
like  the  best  way  to  get  it.  The  real  thing  is  a  phil 
osophy  and  a  sympathy,  not  a  grab.' 

"A  kind  of  helpless  compunction  seizes  me  when 
I  hear  these  unconscious  answers  coming  out  in  un 
guarded  moments.  They  are  so  human.  They  speak 
from  their  hearts,  then,  and  not  by  book.  They  are 
thinking  not  by  formula  but  of  the  majorities  they 
meet  and  jostle  with,  the  men  and  women  who  make 
up  the  actual  world.  In  an  abstract  corner  of  their 
minds  they  find  the  majority  somehow  good,  but 
where  each  one  comes  in  conflict  with  reality  his 
loyalty  goes  with  his  idea.  He  and  his  forlorn  hope 
are  right  against  the  world.  No  majority  could 
make  them  think  differently;  their  consciences  would 
rebel.  How  could  the  majority  change  the  right- 


A  Liberal  Experience  71 

ness  of  their  ideas?  Each  one  in  the  measure  of  his 
sincerity  would  have  contempt  for  the  one  who  could 
trim  his  ideas  to  suit  the  wind  of  popular  opinion. 

"For  a  time  I  thought  that  the  Liberal  writer  was 
an  exception.  His  particular  mission  is  just  this 
belief  in  majorities.  But  in  a  by-election  in  our 
borough  in  March  the  majority  went  wrong.  And 
for  a  moment,  as  he  came  in,  mud-spattered  and 
weary  after  the  count,  and  flung  himself  down  on 
the  couch,  a  touch  of  despair  seized  him.  It  was  no 
comfort  to  him  for  me  to  point  out  that  however  the 
majority  went  the  fundamental  Liberal  principle 
triumphed  because  the  majority  had  had  its  will. 

"He  had  done  what  Liberalism  has  not  done  —  he 
had  put  an  idea  at  the  bottom  of  his  faith.  He  had 
asked  that  the  majority  should  be  right.  And  the 
majority  had  defected.  They  may  have  been  right 
and  he  wrong.  I  don't  know.  But  in  his  honesty 
he  could  not  change  his  judgment  to  suit  the  vote. 
And  for  the  moment  as  he  lay  there  —  and  I  dare 
say  for  the  hundredth  time  —  he  saw  as  those  others 
had  seen,  each  from  his  own  real  contact  with  the 
world,  that  beneath  the  willful  surface  of  his  mind 
he  had  no  belief  in  majorities.  He  caught  the  dis 
junction  between  his  fundamental  principle  and  the 
idea  itself. 

"  'And  yet,'  he  said,  gathering  courage  from  other 
anchorages  of  his  faith,  'right  or  wrong,  still  it  is 
best  that  they  should  have  their  own  way.  What 
ever  they  bring  on  themselves  they  bring  on  them 
selves.  It  is  better  than  the  injustice  of  compulsion 
that  would  come  from  forcing  them  according  to  any 
idea.' 


72  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"He  was  tired  and  discouraged.  He  got  up  and 
went  away,  troubled,  unhappy,  struggling  with  the 
inner  conflict,  a  cloud  of  bitterness  darkening  his 
mood. 

"The  resumption  of  the  point  came  later  from  an 
unexpected  quarter.  I  was  visiting  upstairs  with 
the  uncouth  scientist  of  the  keen  eyes  and  delicate 
hands,  and  the  smooth-browed,  intelligent  girl,  his 
wife.  I  had  been  listening  to  that  vision  of  life  and 
society  as  an  organism  where  neither  crime,  nor 
beauty,  nor  happiness,  nor  will,  nor  anything  hu 
man  but  would  find  its  ultimate  niche  in  the  hier 
archy  of  some  monstrous  physics  textbook. 

"One  doesn't  expect  too  much  consistency  of  men. 
Life  has  a  way  of  avenging  itself  by  striking  a  bal 
ance  and  maintaining  its  humour.  One  expects  to 
find  an  age  of  feminine  suffragists  blossoming  out  in 
a  feminine  dress  that  exaggerates  sexual  differences. 
He  expects  to  find  among  physicists  a  belief  in 
ghosts;  to  find  Dukes  de  Broglie  of  sublime  morals 
and  abysmal  morality,  anti-intellectualists  who  deny 
the  reason  and  reason  out  the  denial,  feeble 
Nietzsches  proclaiming  the  doctrine  of  force,  Rous- 
seaus  asserting  the  inherent  goodness  of  men  and 
laying  bare  their  own  festering  souls.  But  somehow 
one  is  struck  by  the  particular  instances ;  and  there 
I  sat  amazed,  listening  to  the  virulent  tirade  of  the 
scientist  who  believed  that  all  life  and  love  and 
beauty  and  spirit  were  but  mechanical  reactions  — 
his  virulent  tirade  against  the  simple  concept  of  sub 
ordination  in  social  life. 

"His  science  dissolved  when  it  came  home  to  his 
own  will.  What  he,  who  pictured  all  life  but  as  a 


A  Liberal  Experience  73 

vast  mechanism,  revolted  against,  was  compulsion. 
His  point  was  the  injustice  of  forcing  human  wills. 
You  know  the  curious  simplicity  of  scientific  minds 
when  they  step  over  into  the  human  field  —  a  certain 
credulity  of  assumption  in  them.  Their  charm  is 
that  they  reason  frankly;  they  know  how  to  differ 
without  invidious  heat.  And  this  evening,  lured  by 
the  argument  and  by  the  friendliness  of  the  pair  I 
took  up  the  cudgels. 

"Put  to  it,  they  believed  in  government.  Be 
lieving  in  government  they  believed  in  forcing  some 
wills.  And  at  last  they  acknowledged  a  belief  in  the 
stronger  majorities  forcing  the  wills  of  the  weaker 
minority.  But  for  me  as  I  listened,  somehow  the 
idea  of  justice  faded  before  that  crude  picture  of 
the  rule  of  might.  They  themselves  withdrew  the 
plea  of  justice.  They  dallied  for  a  moment  with 
another  possibility  —  that  society  was  an  organism 
in  which  the  individual  was  negligible,  that  majority 
opinion  represented  the  final  opinion  of  the  organism 
to  which  all  the  members  must  conform.  But  in 
that  analogy  the  idea  of  justice  was  but  dimly  seen, 
and  the  concepts  of  the  organism  and  the  negligible 
individual  were  too  Prussian,  lent  themselves  too 
well  to  the  hierarchic  scheme,  to  linger  long  in  front 
of  us.  We  gave  up  the  idea  of  justice.  It  was  plain 
that  there  was  no  more  justice  in  forcing  four  men 
against  their  wills  than  in  forcing  five.  Justice  be 
longed  to  the  category  of  the  idea  and  not  to  that  of 
the  count. 

"It  was  the  girl,  with  her  clear  common  sense  and 
her  touch  of  feminine  practicalness,  who  shifted  the 
majority  rule  to  more  stable  grounds. 


74  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"  'Whether  or  not  it  is  just/  she  said,  'depends 
upon  the  Tightness  of  the  idea  you  enforce.  But 
majority  rule,  as  such,  is  a  matter  of  convenience, 
isn't  it?  If  we  have  government  some  wills  must 
have  their  way  and  others  must  submit.  I  should 
say  that  it  was  done  in  the  interest  of  order1,  simply.' 

"As  I  sat  there  under  the  spell  of  finality  that 
follows  the  simplifications  of  common  sense,  it 
seemed  as  though  the  last  word  had  been  said.  Ma 
jority  rule  was  a  device  in  the  interest  of  order 
simply.  I  thought  back  with  humiliation  on  that 
web  of  complexities  that  I  had  tangled  myself  in. 
One  clear  shaft  of  simple  intelligence  had  done  away 
with  those  probings  after  justice  and  wisdom.  If 
Liberals  had  really  believed  in  the  wisdom  and  jus 
tice  of  majorities  they  would  have  been  passive  under 
the  verdict  of  majorities.  Once  the  majority  had 
decided,  further  agitation  would  have  been  imper 
tinence.  Nothing  would  be  consistent  with  a  belief 
in  majority  wisdom  and  justice  but  to  cease  trying 
to  influence  it  —  to  let  life  drift.  No  one  did  believe 
in  the  essential  wisdom  and  justice  of  majority 
opinion.  It  was  a  device  in  the  interest  of  order 
simply. 

"Then  as  we  looked  at  the  simplified  picture,  a 
new  perplexity  got  hold  of  us.  What  kind  of  order, 
we  asked.  Any  kind  of  submission  made  for  order 
of  a  sort.  The  question  was,  what  was  to  be  the 
quality  of  that  order.  Was  it  to  be  mere  mechanic, 
unthinking  submission  to  any  haphazard  succession 
of  ideas  the  majority  chanced  to  hit  upon?  What 
kinds  of  ideas  were  to  be  submitted  to?  And  those 
questions  plunged  us  back  into  the  night,  for 


A  Liberal   Experience  75 

Liberalism  had  no  answer  to  them.  It  had  no  idea 
of  its  own  to  offer,  no  principle  to  organize  a  con 
sistent  order  around.  All  it  had  to  submit  was  the 
will  of  the  majority. 

"  'It  tries  to  relieve  every  one  of  economic  slavery,' 
the  biologist  said  tentatively. 

"But  we  soon  saw  that  even  the  perfect  accom 
plishment  of  that  aim  left  them  stranded  short  of 
their  beginning  to  have  an  idea.  The  Terrace  in  all 
its  motley  rose  up  before  us  —  more  bitterly,  in 
deed,  for  my  hosts  than  for  me,  for  against  their  own 
ideas  they  felt  the  terrible  menace  of  all  those  other 
inimical  ideas  that  the  Terrace  revealed.  And  what 
order  could  come  out  of  that  chaos?  It  was  just 
there  in  that  chaos  that  Liberalism  abandoned  them. 
What  we  saw  was  that  economic  freedom  was  not 
the  essential  element  of  order.  The  only  order  that 
would  be  tolerable  would  be  a  moral  order.  And 
Liberalism  had  nothing  in  its  principles  to  center  a 
moral  order  around. 

"Rather  in  its  approval  of  anything  that  could  get 
a  majority  behind  it,  it  seemed  to  echo  the  serious 
banter  of  the  jaunty  aesthete.  I  met  him  in  the  park 
one  day  soon  after  this  conversation. 

"'Not  wisdom  —  well,  rather  not!'  he  laughed, 
and  paused,  and  I  saw  him  there  with  his  hands  in 
his  pockets  picturing  the  great  British  public  in  his 
favorite  vision.  'Fancy,  wisdom!  And  I  dare  say 
it's  no  more  just  for  a  score  of  men  to  force  a  dozer 
to  put  water  in  their  beer  than  for  a  dozen  to  force 
a  score  to  put  water  in  their  beer.  On  the  contrary, 
I  call  it  dem'd  ungentlemanly,  might  is  right,  and 
that  sort  of  Prussian  thing.  But  if  we've  got  to 


76  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

have  laws,  and  being  political  animals  I  dare  say  we 
shall  go  on  having  laws,  the  thing  is  still  to  have  as 
many  on  their  own  as  possible,  and  that's  the  ma 
jority,  and  as  few  as  possible  knuckling  under  when 
the  strings  are  pulled,  and  that's  the  minority.  It's 
one  of  the  beneficences  of  Providence,  don't  you  see, 
that  there  are  fewer  in  the  minority  than  in  the 
majority.' 

"I  wanted  to  ask  why  on  their  own,  if  their  own 
were  so  ludicrous  as  his  favourite  vision  pictured 
them,  or  they  were  so  unwise  as  he  imagined  them. 
But  such  a  complaint  would  not  have  reached  what 
was  the  point  with  him.  It  was  the  flashing  colors, 
the  variety,  the  quick  changes  of  irregularity  and 
disorder  that  caught  his  eye  and  pleased  his  aesthetic 
sensibilities.  It  struck  me  suddenly  as  significant 
that  of  all  the  denizens  of  the  Terrace  he  was  the 
only  one  untouched  by  discouragement  —  the  only 
one  whom  Liberalism  seemed  to  satisfy  in  the  reality. 

"It  was  the  Liberal  writer  who  brought  the  point 
back  to  the  problem  of  order.  I  found  him  one 
morning  in  the  crescent  with  his  notebook  open  on 
his  knee.  He  put  it  up  when  he  saw  me,  and  made 
room  on  the  iron  bench  beside  him.  It  was  August 
bank  holiday.  There  was  a  low  white  drift  under 
a  blue  sky,  such  as  makes  a  pastoral  of  London, 
sometimes,  when  there  is  a  blow  in  the  Channel. 

"  'I  dare  say  we  shall  have  it  alone  today,'  he  said, 
and  I  knew  that  there  was  something  behind  the 
tone  of  his  voice.  He  was  irritated.  'They'll  be  off 
to  the  Heath  to  see  the  costers,'  he  went  on  with  a 
glance  at  the  Terrace.  And  then,  after  a  pause  — 
'A  curious  lot!  I'm  afraid  they'll  have  given  you  a 


A  Liberal  Experience  77 

strange  notion  of  us  in  England.  They've  mostly 
gone  daft.  They  are  people  of  one  idea  —  each  one 
with  his  own,  you  know  —  and  you  know  how  a 
single  idea  plays  hob  with  weak  minds.' 

"He  went  on  about  them  at  irritable  length. 
There  was  nothing  petty  in  his  grievance.  He  had 
an  unusual  degree  of  sweet  reasonableness  in  his 
personal  nature.  But  the  concrete  facts  obtruded 
harshly  on  his  principles,  and  it  was  upon  his  prin 
ciples  that  his  heart  was  set. 

"  'What  we  aim  at,'  he  said  in  his  large  way,  Ms 
the  socialization  of  life.  You  have  suggested  that 
we  have  no  idea,  but  that  is  our  idea  —  to  quicken 
the  sense  of  social  responsibility,  to  spread  the 
practice  of  social  co-operation,  to  stimulate  the  con 
sciousness  of  the  common  good.  The  more  wholly 
the  people  take  part  in  government  the  more  they 
must  learn  to  work  together.  For  order,  real  order, 
and  not  a  mere  mechanic  submission,  can  only  come 
from  the  presence  of  some  consistent  and  con 
structive  idea,  a  common  standard  of  judgment,  and 
a  common  ethical  criterion  —  a  whole  people  work 
ing  together.  And  these  people — '  he  looked  up 
sadly  and  there  was  no  malice  in  his  eyes  —  'look 
at  them,  each  penned  up  in  his  little  crib  of  an  idea, 
full  of  mutual  suspicion  —  Old  Flash  and  the  priest, 
mental  healer  and  biologist  and  anti-intellectualist, 
socialist,  aesthete,  rotten  poet,  social  worker  —  each 
one  absorbed  in  his  own  two-penny  theory,  flying 
off  at  a  tangent,  thinking  of  each  other  with  con 
tempt,  and  thinking  of  the  state  only  when  they 
spare  a  moment  from  their  own  interests,  or  when 
they  hope  to  serve  themselves  by  drumming  up  a 


78  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

majority  for  their  own  ends.  What  have  they  in 
common?  What  do  they  try  to  have  in  common. 
They  call  themselves  Liberals,  but  they  get  together 
in  nothing  but  their  hatreds.' 

"I  quoted  a  passage  from  Burke's  Reflections  an 
ticipating  a  time  when  'laws  were  to  be  supported 
only  by  their  own  terrors  and  in  the  concern  which 
each  individual  may  find  in  them  from  his  own 
private  speculations,  or  can  spare  to  them  from  his 
own  private  interest.'  He  looked  up  suddenly, 
startled  by  the  similarity  of  these  old  words  to  his 
own.  Then  with  the  distant  gaze  of  his  thoughtful 
moments  his  unseeing  eyes  rested  on  a  blue-coated 
policeman  plodding  down  the  walk  beyond  the 
palings. 

"  'The  time  has  gone,'  he  mused,  and  I  saw  him 
dropping  back  into  the  style  of  his  lectures,  'when 
we  think  of  laws  as  resting  their  final  sanction  upon 
force,  or  when  we  think  of  force  as  the  outward  ex 
pression  of  law.  Rather  we  think  of  laws  as  the 
outward  expression  of  our  governing  ideas,  the 
codification  of  our  social  will  and  purpose,  the  overt 
and  explicit  embodiment  of  our  civilization,  enacted 
and  published  to  form  the  center  to  which  uncertain 
wills  and  straying  purposes  may  be  attracted,  and 
about  which  maturing  minds  may  be  formed.' 

"As  I  gazed  after  the  distant  policeman  I  knew 
that  my  companion  was  dreaming  his  dream.  He 
had  forgotten  the  Terrace  —  Old  Flash  pandering  to 
class  envy  and  hatred,  the  mental  healer  closing  her 
eyes  to  evil,  the  syndicalist  subverting  order  and 
reason,  the  poet  uglifying  life,  the  aesthete  under 
mining  moral  standards,  and  all  those  others  riding 


A  Liberal   Experience  79 

off  on  their  intellectual  hobbies  farther  and  farther 
from  the  centre  and  from  each  other,  encouraged  to 
fly  off  by  a  fundamental  and  pervasive  doctrine,  that 
social  virtue  lies  not  in  the  Tightness  of  the  idea,  but 
in  whatever  can  muster  numbers  behind  it. 

"  'And  meantime,'  I  asked,  drawing  him  back  to 
the  present  'to  come  at  the  dominance  of  that 
moving,  common  idea?' 

"  'Meantime,'  he  echoed,  musing  for  a  moment; 
and  then  waking  up  to  the  curt  style  of  his  polemic 
articles,  'meantime  it  is  not  a  belief  in  their  wisdom, 
and  it  is  not  a  belief  in  their  justice.  It  is  a  loyalty 
to  the  people  in  spite  of  their  defects.  For  it  is  the 
Liberal  belief  that  men  can  be  educated  to  common 
standards,  that  they  are  persuadable  to  right  think 
ing.' 

"We  were  both  silent.  I  thought  of  the  peda 
gogue  upstairs,  and  the  whole  movement  in  edu 
cation,  and  how  now  that  majority  opinion  had  laid 
hands  upon  it  education  was  promptly  ceasing  to 
lay  down  common  standards,  but  was  diversifying 
itself  more  and  more,  and  earlier  and  earlier  in  the 
child's  life,  and  giving  to  the  young  as  they  matured 
less  and  less  of  a  common  basis  of  thought  and  mu 
tual  understanding. 

"I  thought  again  —  and  ever  again  —  of  the 
medley  there  in  the  Terrace  whose  random  diversity 
and  unbalanced  extremity  had  so  roiled  the  Liberal 
theorist.  The  Liberal  aim  had  been  accomplished 
in  them;  they  were  economically  free;  they  were 
persuadable;  and  they  had  been  persuaded! 

"I  left  him  there,  sad,  and  resolutely  hopeful,  his 
notebook  on  his  knee." 


8o  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"For  me  the  comedy  was  played  out.  Have  I 
been  fantastic,  or  was  the  extravagance  real?  Have 
I  made  too  much  of  the  bare  contrast  of  reality 
with  the  orderly  theory?  Merely  to  play  up  the 
contrast  is  easy,  and  unjust.  Livable  houses,  houses 
with  children,  come  short  of  the  dream  of  the 
motherly  housewife.  But  the  kindly  guest  makes 
allowances;  if  he  is  human  he  likes  the  litter  and 
accumulation  of  the  homely  living-rooms  better  than 
the  flawless  and  inviolable  parlors.  But  he  likes, 
I  imagine,  to  feel  the  dream  of  order  potent  behind 
and  beneath  the  day's  disorder  —  to  know  that  it 
is  the  day's  disorder,  and  not  the  week's,  or  the 
year's  —  incidental  and  not  organic. 

"Can  this  Liberal  dreamer,  with  his  noble  pity  for 
suffering  and  for  thwarted  longings,  and  his  vision 
of  a  people  unified  through  common  standards  and 
common  aims,  hope  to  realize  his  dreams?  Or  is 
there  something  incommensurable  as  between  the 
idea  and  the  rule  of  the  majority?  The  majority  is 
not  inevitably  wise  and  just,  but  neither  is  it  in 
evitably  unwise  and  unjust.  At  any  one  moment  it 
is  a  matter  of  fact.  So  I  have  tried  to  look  at  these 
people  here,  so  typical,  it  seems  to  me,  of  the  great 
restless  democracies.  I  catch  the  mournful  cadence 
of  my  words,  and  you  may  smile;  I  do  myself.  But 
I  have  looked  further  to  generalize  the  view  —  to 
see  the  kind  of  plays  that  they  encourage  in  the 
theaters,  the  kind  of  sermons  they  listen  to  in  their 
churches,  the  kind  of  books  that  sell  best,  because 
they  buy  them,  the  kind  of  men  they  put  into 
office  —  and  the  spectacle  is  not  heartening. 

"I  can  find  no  intelligent  Liberal  who  bases  his 


A  Liberal  Experience  81 

hopes  on  the  present  quality  of  the  people.  It  is  a 
trust  that  they  may  be  persuaded  to  better  thinking 
that  feeds  the  Liberal  faith.  I  have  talked  to  Mr. 
Wells,  that  arch-dreamer  of  a  better  day,  and 
beneath  his  simple  kindly  manner  I  have  seen  a  sad 
and  sacred  anger  at  the  stupidity  of  human  inertia. 
I  have  seen  in  his  brooding  face  a  sense  of  impotence 
to  make  men  see  the  lucid  ideas  that  seem  so  simple, 
so  obvious  to  him  who  has  spent  his  years  in  thought. 
But  for  the  great  masses  —  they  are  still  to  be  won. 
"Can  they  be  persuaded?  More  especially  does 
the  Liberal  doctrine  tend  to  persuade  them?  Is 
there  anything  inherent  in  the  fundamental  Liberal 
principle  of  majority  rule  beyond  the  mechanical 
order  that  comes  from  minority  submission?  This 
is  my  problem.  This  is  the  heart  of  my  quest. 

"For  my  own  part  I  can  find  nothing  more.  Wis 
dom  and  justice  are  not  inherent  in  majority  opinion; 
no  idea  is  inherent  in  it.  No  moral  idea  is  more 
sacred  than  the  majority  itself.  Even  its  consti 
tutions  are  coming  to  be  resented  as  too  great  checks 
upon  its  vagaries.  The  men  that  make  up  majori 
ties,  indeed,  may  be  persuaded  to  moral  ideas;  that, 
let  me  repeat,  is  the  great  Liberal  hope.  But  when 
we  come  to  ask  what  they  are  to  be  persuaded  to 
through  Liberalism,  we  come  to  the  great  contra 
diction.  Liberalism  has  no  ideas  so  sacred  as  any 
other  ideas  that  the  majority  may  enact.  It  has 
no  nucleus,  no  center  about  which  to  organize  an 
order.  It  has  taken  these  errant,  earnest  men  and 
women  of  the  Terrace  to  the  end  of  its  tether.  And 
there  they  are,  as  they  are.  It  has  nothing  more  to 
say  to  them.  Or  if  individual  Liberals  plead  with 


82  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

them  to  bring  the  masses  from  poverty,  even  that 
plea  aims  only  to  bring  the  masses  into  the  condition 
of  the  Terrace  itself.  It  does  nothing  to  bring 
moral  order  into  the  intolerable  confusion  that  the 
Terrace  itself  presents.  And  so  long  as  that  con 
fusion  endures,  what  real  hope  is  there  that  even 
that  aim  may  be  accomplished? 

"Modern  Liberalism  impresses  me  with  its  para 
doxes.  Its  avowed  aim  is  to  socialize  life.  But  to 
me  it  appears  to  work  only  in  the  other  direction. 
Its  influence  from  the  first  has  been  to  destroy  the 
unifying  agencies.  Personal  loyalty  has  gone  with 
the  passing  of  personal  rule;  a  common  ethical  stan 
dard  has  gone  with  the  decay  of  religion;  a  common 
intellectual  standard  has  gone  with  the  democra 
tization  of  the  schools.  And  it  has  put  nothing  in 
their  place. 

"It  is  a  curious  thing  to  notice  that  the  uniform 
dissolution  of  each  of  these  unities  has  been  in  the 
non-moral  direction  of  economics.  Under  the  di 
rection  of  majorities  politics  has  become  a  matter  of 
the  regulation  of  business;  the  church  tends  to  be 
come  a  propaganda  for  the  amelioration  of  the  poor, 
and  the  schools  a  training  for  vocation. 

"I  know  that  there  are  those  who  can  speak  scorn 
fully  of  the  people,  and  who  will  point  out  that  in 
evitably  the  first  consideration  of  the  mass  of  men 
will  be  for  their  bellies.  But  for  my  own  part  I 
can't  speak  in  such  scornful  terms.  Seeing  how 
well  even  the  best  of  men  feed  themselves  if  they 
can,  I  can  hardly  scorn  those  who  often  go  hungry 
for  wanting  to  do  the  same.  It  is  not  a  case  for 
contempt;  the  economic  need  fastens  on  all  of  us. 


A  Liberal   Experience  83 

But  it  is  suggestive  of  the  destitution  of  Liberal 
ideas,  to  their  want  of  moral  principles  —  I  mean  of 
course  constructive  principles  looking  toward  a 
moral  order  —  that  their  politics,  in  the  very 
broadest  sense  of  the  term,  should  descend  to  the 
irreducible  minimum  of  economics  —  fall  of  its  own 
weight  to  the  bottommost  level  where  the  bare  me 
chanic  necessities  of  life  catch  us  all.  What  poverty 
of  spirit  it  reveals!  How  meagre  the  appeal  to  the 
imagination,  to  the  ardent  loyalty  of  youth,  to  the 
faith  that  we  are  something  more  than  animals  to 
be  fed  and  kept  fat.  Do  they  imagine  that  by 
paring  down  our  sense  of  humanity  to  the  economic 
limit  we  shall  care  enough  about  the  whole  affair  to 
be  much  concerned  for  the  miserable  stragglers? 
Don't  they  see  that  it  is  just  by  centering  our  whole 
attention  upon  the  economic  struggle  that  the 
economic  struggle  grows  most  fierce?  Can't  they 
see  that  the  mitigation  of  economic  evils  comes,  not 
from  economics  itself,  but  from  motives  that  can 
find  no  place  in  their  dreary  statistics  and  dismal 
textbooks  —  that  it  conies,  when  it  does  come,  from 
a  large  and  generous  sense  of  the  dignity  and  des 
tiny  of  mankind? 

"They  say  that  their  aim  is  to  socialize  life,  to 
animate  it  with  social  sympathy,  to  make  the  laws 
the  nucleus  about  which  maturing  minds  may  centre 
their  conception  of  an  eligible  life,  and  to  which 
straying  wills  may  conform.  But  what,  in  the  fact, 
do  they  offer,  what  dominant  principle  to  bring  the 
many  together  under  a  common  moral  standard,  to 
give  their  lives  a  common  motive  and  a  common 
purpose?  No  moral  idea  that  the  majority  may  not 


84  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

overthrow  at  will,  nothing  to  unify  that  majority, 
nothing  to  give  it  a  single  common  aim  and  tend  to 
hold  it  in  that  direction. 

"The  people  are  not  to  blame.  The  moral  idea 
is  personal,  the  expression  of  the  humane  element  of 
the  spirit;  but  the  majority  is  large,  impersonal, 
mechanical.  The  Liberals,  with  their  faith  in  the 
majority,  call  themselves  progressive.  Progressive! 
Can  there  be  anything  so  fixed,  so  unprogressive  as 
the  great  impersonal  average  that  finds  its  ex 
pression  in  the  majority  —  the  elemental  beneath 
the  roots  of  our  developed  differences?  It  fluctu 
ates,  it  sways  back  and  forth  within  the  narrow 
limits,  and  gives  to  the  myopic  the  illusion  of  change; 
and  to  the  myopic  change  is  always  progress.  But 
in  the  large  it  stays  the  same,  and  its  politics  sink 
to  the  expression  of  that  irreducible  minimum  of 
wants  and  desires  that  affect  us  all,  that  mechanic 
pressure  of  economic  need.  Is  this  but  a  pretty 
theory?  The  politics  of  every  Liberal  nation  has 
reduced  itself  to  this  minimum. 

"Is  there  no  way  out,  no  movement  forward,  no 
real  progress,  nothing  but  the  swaying  back  and 
forth  in  rebellion  against  this  force  that  Liberalism 
renders  us  into  the  power  of?  Liberalism  itself  rebels 
now  at  this  extreme  and  now  at  that;  it  began  with 
laissez-faire  till  laissez-faire  grew  intolerable,  and 
now  it  has  turned  about  and  is  all  for  regulation  and 
restriction.  But  still  we  agitate  ourselves  in  the 
mechanic  field  of  economics,  and  Liberalism  offers 
us  nothing  to  lead  us  out.  Nothing  can  lead  us  out 
but  the  moral  principle. 

"And  now,  though  you  smile,  I  must  offer  you 


A  Liberal   Experience  85 

another  paradox.  Sometimes  I  have  a  gleam  of 
penetration  into  the  possibility  that  it  is  the  fear  of 
having  a  moral  principle  that  is  at  the  center  of 
Liberal  strength.  For  a  people  to  have  such  an  idea, 
to  govern  themselves  by  it,  as  a  man  of  character 
governs  himself  by  his  principles,  would  perhaps 
soon  grow  grievous  to  many,  soon  seem  to  subject 
them  to  the  will  of  those  who  still  stood  loyally  to 
it.  And  if  they  who  still  held  to  it  were  fewer  than 
the  majority,  the  cry  of  compulsion,  of  tyranny, 
would  rise  against  them.  Not  that  the  majority 
objects  on  principle  to  compulsion,  or  to  the  tyranny 
of  enforced  ideas.  There  is  the  minority  who  must 
submit.  Moreover  Liberalism  has  become  the  party 
of  the  high  hand;  it  has  quite  gone  in  for  sweeping 
control.  One  may  sympathize  with  the  feeling  of 
the  majority  —  at  least  one  may  understand  it  —  in 
case  it  finds  the  principle  maintained  but  by  the 
minority.  Why  should  the  few  coerce  the  many? 
Men  want  their  own  way,  and  so  long  as  there  is 
recourse  to  the  vote  the  many  may  have  it,  whatever 
the  wisdom  and  justice  of  the  principle.  Liberalism 
offers  them  that  —  the  power  to  have  their  own  way; 
that  is  its  attraction;  that  is  its  strength.  The 
value  of  a  principle  is  its  power  to  guide  the  will 
when  the  will  rebels,  but  Liberalism  offers  none  to 
guide  the  majority  when  their  will  rebels.  They 
have  by  Liberal  theory  —  the  only  Liberal  theory  — 
recourse  to  a  Liberal  principle  more  fundamental 
than  any  rational  or  moral  principle. 

"For  Liberalism  is  the  government,  par  excellence, 
of  the  doctrine  of  might.  Authority  shifts  with  the 
shift  of  power;  it  goes  with  numbers,  and  not  with 


86  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

the  idea.  Numbers  add  up  into  power  and  not  into 
wisdom  and  justice;  and  power  belongs  to  the  ir 
rational  forces.  That  is  the  distinguishing  quality 
of  Liberalism.  And  this  submission  to  numbers  has 
the  appeal  of  finality  —  the  ultimate  decision  of 
force.  Those  who  object  are  eternally  of  the  weaker 
party.  But  it  is  the  giving  up  of  the  human  problem; 
for  the  eternal  human  problem  is  the  problem  of  the 
idea. 

"  'What  ideas?'  I  hear  you  asking.  But  indeed 
I  have  not  been  looking  for  specific  ideas.  I  have 
only  been  looking  for  conditions  under  which  any 
ideas  have  a  chance  to  be  established  and  main 
tained.  It  is  not  that  individual  Liberals  themselves 
have  no  ideas.  I  have  read  slowly  through  the  po 
litical  writing  of  the  day.  It  is  all  avowedly  Liberal. 
The  best  of  it  is  clear,  rational,  appealing,  offering 
pictures  of  social  relations,  that  seem  kindly  and 
wise.  One  may  go  far  before  he  will  find  visions  that 
are  more  perfect.  But  they  are  not  Liberalism. 

"For  alas  —  what  chance  have  they  of  Liberal 
realization?  They  are  wrought  out,  each  one,  with 
infinite  labour  and  thought,  unified,  consistent,  their 
details  tested  by  definite  standards,  brought  into  a 
system  from  a  stable  point  of  view.  Each  writer 
has  subjected  himself  to  a  rigid  discipline,  holding 
himself  steadily  to  clear  underlying  principles, 
judging  this  and  that  by  firm  criteria,  rejecting  here, 
altering  there.  But  dire  as  his  labor  is  it  is  simple 
compared  with  the  task  of  putting  it  into  currency. 
And  yet,  though  as  a  writer  he  has  sweat  blood  to 
build  logically  on  the  basis  of  the  idea,  he  must  hand 
it  over,  as  a  Liberal,  to  a  multitude  from  whom  on 


A  Liberal  Experience  87 

principle  he  demands  no  fundamental  idea,  no 
common  standard.  He  has  built  so  well  because  he 
has  held  himself  with  infinite  pains  to  an  underlying 
moral  conception.  And  they  to  whom  civil  life  has 
been  entrusted  have  given  up  judging  on  the  moral 
basis;  their  criterion  is  the  lot,  the  finality  of  ma 
jority  power. 

"In  the  year  here  on  the  Terrace  I  have  come  to 
know  the  Liberal  writer  well  —  better  than  is  com 
mon  between  men.  He  has  something  that  catches 
the  affection  —  his  human  side  is  out,  and  it  is  a 
very  likable  side.  He  is  serious,  but  he  has  humor, 
too.  'I  dare  say,'  he  smiled  sadly  one  day,  'the 
trouble  with  us  Liberals  is  that  we  make  Utopias, 
and  think  we  have  been  thinking.'  We  laughed,  but 
the  quip  was  profound.  'And  even  those  Utopias 
are  not  alike,'  he  went  on.  'Our  visions  themselves 
clash.  Until  we  who  make  them  can  agree  upon  one 
Utopia  among  us,  it  is  a  brave  thing  to  hope  that  we 
can  lead  a  whole  people.  Even  if  our  Utopias  agreed, 
perhaps  it  would  hardly  be  a  Liberal  habit  of 
thought  to  begin  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  per 
fect  vision,  and  try  to  come  by  our  ends  through 
regulation  and  restrictions  downward.  I'm  afraid 
we  are  still  thinking  like  Caesar  —  are  still  autocrats 
at  heart.  We  are  benevolent  enough.  And  seeing 
what  we  think  would  be  good  for  our  people  we  try 
to  foist  it  upon  them  whether  they  want  it  or  not. 
We  do  it,  indeed,  by  majorities.  But  how  are  ma 
jorities  mustered  at  the  best?  It  isn't  assent,  but  the 
thought  behind  it  that  makes  a  vote  liberal.  If  we 
were  Liberal  ourselves,  we  who  try  to  lead,  we  would 


88  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

want  the  people  to  have  their  own  will.  Only,'  he 
paused,  smiling,  'we  would  want  them  to  want  Lib 
eral  things. 

"  'And  here  I  am/  he  continued  after  another  mo 
ment.  'I've  swung  about  through  the  full  circle,  and 
I'm  ready  to  begin  again  proclaiming  my  Utopia. 
But  sometimes  here,  as  we  have  talked  together,  an 
other  doubt  has  got  hold  of  me.  Suppose  I  could 
have  my  dream,  in  all  its  outward  perfection,  would 
I  wish  it  upon  the  people  as  we  know  them?  It  has 
been  published.  They  have  seen  it.  There  is 
nothing  in  it  that  could  not  be  got,  peaceably  and  by 
law.  But  they  haven't  brought  it  about.  They  don't 
want  it.  The  art  critic,  your  metaphysical  friend, 
the  biologist,  the  pedagogue  —  they  don't  want  it. 
When  I  think  of  the  multitude  of  madly  divergent 
men  and  women  whom  these  people  typify,  I'm  not 
sure  that  I  should  want  it  either.  I  doubt  whether 
it  would  seem  Utopian  to  them. 

"  'I  think  we  have  missed  something  from  our  Lib 
eral  programme  —  something  that  should  tend  to 
bring  them  together,  not  into  agreement,  perhaps, 
but  at  least  into  a  common  understanding.  For  now 
what  is  so  egregious  is  that  they  don't  think  alike. 
They  have  no  common  mental  counters.  The  com 
pulsions  that  would  have  to  be  enforced,  then  as 
now,  would  seem  unjust  to  them,  just  as  other  peo 
ple's  Utopias  seem  unjust  to  me,  leaving  out  of  ac 
count  aspirations  that  seem  to  me  very  dear  to  hu 
man  happiness.  I'm  afraid  that  we've  begun  at 
the  wrong  end.  If  we  are  really  Liberals  and  really 
want  that  last  and  most  precious  freedom  that  we 
prate  of  —  the  freedom  and  equality  of  the  individ- 


A  Liberal  Experience  89 

ual  and  the  embodiment  of  his  will  in  the  laws  that 
govern  him  —  and  if  we  want  that  will  to  be  Liberal 
and  just,  we  shall  have  to  begin  at  the  other  end. 
For  after  all's  said,  there  can  be  only  one  Liberal 
doctrine  —  such  a  common  and  universal  education 
as  would  tend  to  bring  about  common  standards  of 
thought,  mutual  understanding,  collective  aspira 
tion,  and  a  common  sense  of  justice.  When  that 
becomes  our  fundamental  doctrine,  then  at  last  we 
shall  become  Liberals.  The  rest  would  take  care 
of  itself.' 

"We  smiled.  Perhaps  it  was  but  a  moment's  re 
turn  upon  himself.  But  he  came  near  in  that  mo 
ment,  I  fancy,  to  seeing  the  bottom  of  the  well 
where  Liberal  truth  lies  hid.  And  he  put  for  me, 
from  his  own  point  of  view,  the  thought  that  had 
been  hovering  vaguely  over  all  my  year's  floundering 
in  the  Terrace.  As  we  both  stood  looking  at  that 
smoke-softened  fagade,  I  knew  that  he,  as  well  as 
I,  was  thinking  of  that  motley  array,  and  wonder 
ing  whether  a  party,  made  up  of  them  and  their 
like,  would  ever  impose  on  itself  the  only  doctrine 
that  at  its  heart  can  ever  be  called  Liberal." 


IV 

A  MODERN  PARADOX 

IT  was  after  his  return  from  England  that  there 
occurred  in  our  friend's  chambers  an  event  of  a 
kind  rare  enough  anywhere  perhaps  in  our  none  too 
serious,  or  all  too  serious  century,  and  certainly 
rare  enough  in  the  way  it  occurred  there.  In  record 
ing  it  —  after  the  manner  of  Thucydides  no  doubt, 
for  there  was  no  reporter  present  —  he  followed  the 
necessary  courtesy  of  silence  imposed  by  the  times 
concerning  a  circumstance  without  which  it  could 
hardly  have  occurred.  He  could  hardly  record  that 
in  the  generous  heat  of  wine  his  guests  grew  elo 
quent  and  made  extraordinarily  long  speeches,  for 
all  that  the  fine  coherence  of  their  ideas  and  the 
lively  interest  they  all  maintained  to  the  end  pro 
claimed  a  moderation  that  was  exemplary.  That 
too,  malice  might  have  said,  was  Thucydidean. 

The  four  of  them  who  were  there,  however,  dis 
tributed  their  seriousness  and  their  levity  after  their 
own  fashion ;  they  took  their  wine  with  a  light  heart 
and  their  ideas  with  a  fitting  gravity.  Or  perhaps 
it  was  not  their  own  fashion  either,  for  they  were  all 
of  them  in  familiar  touch  with  the  past,  and  no 
doubt  drew  upon  it  a  good  deal  in  forming  con 
sciously  or  unconsciously  their  sense  of  life  and  its 
proportions  and  bounties.  Thus  they  could  not 


A  Modern  Paradox  91 

have  been  quite  unconscious  of  another  occasion  a 
long  time  ago  which  had  its  resemblances  to  the 
present  one,  and  brought  them,  on  this  evening,  into 
pleasant  touch  with  a  great  tradition.  And  they 
could  not  have  brought  themselves  to  frown  very 
severely  upon  the  ancient  circumstance  that  of  old 
had  produced  such  delightful  results.  But  if  they 
thought  of  this  at  all  it  must  have  been  afterwards, 
for  what  happened  was  not  planned,  and  sprang 
naturally  out  of  the  promptings  of  the  moment. 

If  it  had  been  planned  it  would  have  been  in  a 
measure  cruel,  for  the  situation  that  developed  be 
fore  the  end  was  not  altogether  free  from  pain.  The 
four  men  had  indeed  much  in  common  below  the 
level  of  their  differences,  but  they  had  gone  their 
different  ways  and  emerged  with  different  concep 
tions,  and  these  struck  across  each  other  at  times 
with  the  sharp  clash  that  for  all  of  them  was  the 
spice  of  the  occasion.  But  they  held  their  ideas 
seriously,  and  one  of  them  shortly  found  himself  in 
an  alliance  that  must  have  been  hard  to  bear. 

He  was  the  one  least  known  to  the  others,  so  that 
if  he  had  come  a  little  shyly  among  the  three  old 
friends  who  had  gathered  on  the  traveler's  return, 
feeling,  with  a  sensitive  nature,  a  little  remote  from 
the  rest,  his  separation  was  the  more  acute  in  the 
end.  For  though  he  found  himself  aligned  with  one 
of  the  others,  it  was  an  alignment  full  of  chagrin 
and  bitterness,  and  left  him  poignantly  alone.  He 
was  a  man  of  peculiarly  gentle  disposition,  and  so 
was  removed  doubly  from  the  others  by  the  sensi 
tive  manners  that  kept  them  from  offering  the  sym 
pathy  that  they  felt.  The  bent  of  his  faith  was 


92  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

humanitarian,  and  he  was  allied  to  that  modern 
school  that  kindles  eagerly  at  the  sight  of  poverty 
and  deprivation,  and  offers  itself  generously  to  the 
task  of  remolding  an  obdurate  society. 

Of  the  others,  one  was  a  frank  democrat  of  the 
old  intellectual  breed,  hard-headed,  dry,  direct,  diffi 
cult  to  kindle  but  once  alight  burning  with  a  good 
flame.  The  third  was  perhaps  the  most  interesting 
of  them  all.  He  was  a  Grecian  and  a  historian,  with 
a  body  of  tremendous  bulk  and  energy,  an  explo 
sive  flow  of  talk,  and  an  eye  that  flashed  at  moments 
but  at  others  was  serene,  aloof,  or  kindly  in  its 
quick  appreciations  or  its  reflective  abstraction. 
Grote  was  his  bete  noire  —  a  Whig  pamphleteer  was 
his  phrase  for  that  historian  —  and  served,  by  con 
trast,  to  emphasize  the  aristocratic  leanings  of  his 
own  social  faith. 

Their  host  was  the  fourth.  He  had  but  recently 
returned  from  England  where  he  had  spent  a  sab 
batical  in  reading  and  reflecting.  If  in  his  record 
of  what  took  place  on  this  evening  he  played  no  part 
it  was  rather  because  he  had  had  his  say  at  previous 
compotations  than  because  in  fact  he  said  nothing, 
for  his  habit  was  rather  copious  than  otherwise.  But 
the  situation  that  developed,  and  which  made  him  so 
sedulous  a  recorder,  developed  without  need  of  him, 
and  the  report  was  long  enough  as  it  was.  An 
October  dawn  was  threatening  the  east  when  they 
parted. 

They  had  had  a  late  dinner  and  had  returned  to 
their  host's  fireside  and  decanters.  Their  talk  was 
of  the  problem  that  the  traveler's  reflections  had 
brought  up,  and  was  full  of  the  endless  friendly 


A  Modern  Paradox  93 

clash  of  their  various  opinions.  It  was  because  the 
humanitarian's  point  of  view  was  the  one  most 
provocative  —  being  most  current  —  that  someone 
suggested  that  it  be  given  a  full  and  uninterrupted 
hearing.  From  that  suggestion  the  rest  followed. 
They  settled  themselves  about  the  table  and  before 
the  fire,  and  the  humanitarian  began. 

They  were  all  of  them  moved  by  the  generous 
ardour  that  animated  his  brief  exposition,  perhaps 
the  more  so  that  they  saw  in  his  gentleness  of  tone 
and  expression  the  fine  restraint  of  an  appealing 
reasonableness. 

"I  know,"  he  said,  "that  you  began  your  demo 
cratic  career  as  a  revolt  against  aristocracy.  I  had 
almost  said  'we,'  and  with  your  consent  I  will  say 
'we'  hereafter,  for  I  feel  a  part  of  you  now,  though 
then  my  fathers  were  little  more  than  serfs  in  a 
country  that  had  scant  sympathy  for  that  revolt. 
I  have  naturally  my  own  sympathy  for  it.  I  can 
not  help  feeling,  however,  that  as  we  have  gone  on 
through  the  century  and  a  third  since  then  we  have 
preserved  some  exaggerations  that  were  proper 
enough  at  the  moment  of  reaction,  but  which  are 
not  proportionately  important  when  the  moment  of 
reaction  is  over.  I  mean  especially  our  mode  of 
thinking  in  terms  of  classes.  Democracy  nec 
essarily  began  by  a  concern  for  the  oppressed 
classes,  but  as  it  became  less  and  less  a  reaction  and 
found  itself  launched  on  its  own  bottom  and  set  out 
on  its  own  voyage  the  logic  of  such  thinking  has 
seemed  to  me  inconsistent.  The  impulse  of  democ 
racy  was,  after  all,  at  bottom  not  sympathy  with 


94  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

oppressed  classes,  but  sympathy  with  oppressed  in 
dividuals.  And  sympathy  with  the  wants  and  needs 
of  individuals  is  the  constant  principle  of  the  demo 
cratic  ideal. 

"Democracy  must,  of  course,  act  by  majorities; 
but  majorities  differ  from  classes  by  the  obvious 
distinction  that  majorities  are  recruited  vertically 
through  all  strata,  not,  like  classes,  horizontally. 
And  they  are  created  by  opinion,  personal  reflection, 
individual  longings  and  affections.  They  are  created, 
that  is,  by, those  aspirations  of  the  individual  for 
which  democracy  exists.  If  you  will  think,  then,  of 
sympathy  with  the  wants  and  needs  and  aspirations 
of  the  individual  as  the  principle  that  applies  pro 
gressively  in  all  stages  of  the  developing  democracy, 
you  will,  I  think,  see  the  point  of  what  I  should  like 
to  say. 

"It  is  on  the  basis  of  this  principle  that  I  wish 
first  of  all  to  criticise  the  schools.  I  mention  the 
schools  because  I  think  that  there  more  than  any 
where  else  do  we  cling,  by  the  inertia  of  institutions 
and  the  force  of  traditions,  to  that  first  impulse  of 
reaction,  and  to  that  mode  of  thinking  in  terms  of 
classes,  which  was  inevitable  at  the  first  leap  away 
from  aristocracy.  And  I  mention  them,  moreover, 
because  it  seems  to  me  that  they  are  the  agent 
which  can  do  more  than  any  other  agent  of  democ 
racy  to  express  its  active  sympathy  —  do  more,  that 
is,  to  give  real  force  to  its  underlying  principle.  The 
rest  of  the  action  of  democracy  is  largely  the  admin 
istrative  routine  common  to  all  governments;  but  in 
the  schools  it  does  something  fundamental:  it  gets 
down  to  the  individual  who  is  so  appealing  to  us, 


A  Modern  Paradox  95 

and  gets  down  to  him  at  the  time  when  he  is  most 
pliable,  when  whatever  influences  are  upon  him  are 
determining  the  degree  to  which  his  wants  and  needs 
and  aspirations  can  ever  be  fulfilled.  And  so  what 
ever  is  said  about  the  schools  is  said  about  democ 
racy  in  the  large.  For  the  schools,  I  might  say,  are 
the  democracy  —  its  essence  in  dynamic  action. 

"The  schools  have,  I  think  we  should  agree,  clung 
pretty  close  to  the  tradition  which  they  began  with, 
and  which  they  inherited  from  the  older  schools  of 
the  aristocratic  society  from  which  we  sprang.  It 
was  natural  enough.  We  wanted  in  our  first  re 
action  against  aristocracy  to  give  to  every  one  the 
particular  things  which  we  had  seen  him  specifically 
deprived  of  under  the  old  regime.  Our  thoughts 
were  mainly  to  get  away  from  the  hostile  shore  we 
were  escaping  from,  but  we  were  intoxicated  with 
our  plunder  and  we  began  by  dividing  the  spoils. 
We  were  not  yet  calmly  settled  to  the  responsibil 
ities  of  steering  our  own  course.  The  schools  seem 
to  me  to  be  still  in  the  attitude  of  those  early  years 
though  we  have  long  since  ceased  to  value  the  par 
ticular  booty  that  we  go  on  dividing. 

"That  old  education  was  a  class  education.  It 
was  calculated  to  fit  a  few  people  to  a  definite 
stratum  of  society,  and  to  a  definite  work  which 
pertained  to  that  stratified  society.  It  was,  for  that 
class,  a  training  for  vocation.  It  was  definitely 
adjusted  to  a  definite  end  which  pertained  uniformly 
to  that  class.  It  thought,  so  to  speak,  in  terms  of 
class,  and  formed  the  minds  of  its  youth  to  think  in 
those  terms.  And  it  was  right.  It  was  an  adjust 
ment  to  definitely  perceived  conditions. 


96  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"As  for  us,  however,  though  those  conditions  no 
longer  hold,  and  though  we  no  longer  need  bravely 
to  assert  ourselves  against  them,  and  though  we 
have  no  classes  at  all,  our  schools  are  still  in  that 
attitude  of  class  self-assertion,  and  still,  instead  of 
acting  on  our  own  dynamic  principle,  cling  to  that 
education  that  was  adjusted  to  those  now  dead 
conditions. 

"Now  that  I  am  launched  among  platitudes  let 
me  utter  briefly  the  two  or  three  others  that  stand 
in  my  way  before  I  go  on  to  more  specific,  and,  I 
hope,  more  stimulating  matters.  The  conditions 
that  are  changed  are  these.  Instead  of  a  govern 
ment  of  the  many  by  the  few,  we  have  a  government 
of  the  many  by  the  many.  Instead  of  a  class  whose 
private  business  is  the  public  business,  we  have  a 
government  by  the  many  whose  private  business 
is  variously  something  else.  Now,  the  older  edu 
cation  did  as  an  education  should  do:  it  served  the 
whole  need  of  those  for  whom  it  was  calculated. 
I  repeat  this  obvious  truth  because  it  brings  me  to 
the  heart  of  my  own  belief  in  the  matter  with  the 
assertion  that  our  present  schools,  supported  by  a 
democracy  whose  principle  is  a  sympathy  with  the 
wants  and  needs  and  aspirations  of  the  individual, 
fail  to  perform  an  equally  right  service  for  those 
whom  they  are  calculated  to  serve.  They  are  not 
really  serving  those  for  whom  the  sympathy  that 
creates  them  exists. 

"If  I  may  go  on  I  should  like  to  point  out  wherein 
and  to  what  extent  this  seems  to  me  to  be  true. 
Some  modifications  have  taken  place  in  the  schools, 
I  know,  and,  I  believe,  in  the  right  direction.  The 


A  Modern  Paradox  97 

pressure  of  conditions  has  been  too  strong  to  be 
wholly  withstood;  but  by  and  large  the  schools  re 
main  the  same.  In  some  respects  they  should  re 
main  the  same;  children  should,  in  all  our  views, 
learn  their  three  R's.  But  now  in  the  upper  grades 
and  in  the  high  school  they  fall  heir  to  a  set  of 
studies  that  are  largely  linguistic  and  literary  and 
historical;  I  need  not  specify  that  combination  of 
Greek,  Latin,  French,  German,  English  literature, 
and  history  which,  added  to  mathematics  and  some 
science,  make  up  the  last  half  of  the  usual  public 
school  course.  I  should  like,  if  I  may,  to  call  this 
course  by  a  convenient  name  for  the  moment,  to 
avoid  the  necessity  of  tedious  repetition.  The  term 
'literary'  will  serve  roughly  to  designate  and  de 
scribe  it.  This  literary  course  then,  it  seems  to  me, 
fails  really  to  meet  the  whole  needs  of  the  democ 
racy,  as  it  did  meet  the  needs  of  the  ruling  class. 
It  would  be  strange  that  it  should  meet  equally  well 
such  widely  diverse  conditions. 

"Among  these  literary  studies  there  has  been  in 
troduced,  here  and  there  in  recent  years,  a  type  of 
study  differing  widely  from  them,  and  devoted  to 
particular  ends  —  vocational  studies  I  mean  — 
agriculture,  mechanics,  carpentry,  bookkeeping, 
sewing,  cooking.  I  know  how  the  mention  of  these 
homely,  workaday  matters  jars  on  the  delicate  ear. 
Their  linsey-woolsey  seems  coarse  after  the  silken 
fineness  of  the  more  elegant  studies.  The  discussion 
seems  at  once  to  drop  into  the  commonplace  and  the 
banal.  And  yet,  if  we  are  democrats  it  is  perhaps 
preponderatingly  with  such  linsey-woolsey  wants 
and  needs  and  aspirations  that  we  sympathize.  We 


98  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

can  not  be  democratic  by  sympathizing  only  with  a 
set  of  wants  and  needs  and  aspirations  which  we 
have  arbitrarily  and  against  their  will  set  up  for  the 
people.  We  must  take  them  as  they  are,  and 
follow  the  democratic  principle  whithersoever  it 
leads. 

"Where  these  vocational  studies  have  been  in 
troduced  they  exist  side  by  side  with  the  others, 
each  kind  taking  time  that  might  be  devoted  to  the 
other.  At  the  best,  however,  they  are  a  minor  part 
of  the  whole  course,  and  in  most  places  they  have 
not  been  introduced  at  all.  And  so  we  may  think 
of  the  general  situation  in  the  schools  as  having  been 
created  by  the  literary  course.  If  we  examine  the 
schools,  then,  we  shall  see  the  great  mass  of  pupils 
leaving  before  they  reach  the  high  school,  and  of 
those  who  do  enter  the  high  school  we  shall  see  but 
a  meagre  proportion  going  on  to  graduation. 

"Those  who  leave  before  the  end  of  the  course 
leave  for  some  reason.  They  leave,  I  think,  for  one 
of  two  reasons.  Economic  pressure  —  poverty  —  is 
the  name  of  one.  As  to  these,  it  seems  to  me  that 
the  pertinent  question  is  —  What  has  the  school 
done  for  them?  The  pressure  that  makes  them 
quit  school  forces  them  to  hunt  for  work  —  work 
of  the  kind  that  they  can  get  with  their  youth,  and 
their  inexperience,  and  their  untrained  hands.  They 
can  not  seek  apprenticeship;  they  must  have  im 
mediate  returns.  And  I  can  only  ask  in  sympathy: 
What  has  the  school  done  for  them  in  their  peculiar 
need?  Their  peculiar  need  is  to  be  rescued  from  the 
great  mass  of  the  unskilled  among  whom  lie  the 
most  of  our  poverty,  and  squalor,  and  hopelessness. 


A  Modern  Paradox  99 

It  is  but  little  use  to  say  that  the  schools  have  other 
ends  to  serve.  For  these  miserable  ones  it  serves  no 
other  end.  They  have  quit  it.  And  in  the  time 
when  it  still  might  have  done  much  for  them  it 
failed  to  do  the  one  thing  which  would  have  been  of 
help. 

"For  the  rest,  they  quit  because  the  studies  offered 
them  failed  to  hold  them.  If  they  are  of  the  kind 
to  be  repelled  by  those  studies,  and  to  quit  school  for 
lack  of  understanding  and  lack  of  interest,  they  too 
are  of  the  kind  to  go  out  into  the  world  of  work. 
They  can  be  more  nice  in  their  search;  they  can 
pick  and  choose;  but  they  might  have  been  kept  in 
school,  have  been  better  informed,  better  disciplined, 
better  prepared  for  whatever  tasks  they  fall  to.  And 
of  these  I  should  ask:  What  studies  would  have  held 
them?  Obviously  not  those  which  are  now  forced 
upon  them.  Obviously,  if  any,  it  would  have  been 
those  which  respond  to  those  interests  which  drew 
them  from  school  —  training  in  those  vocations 
toward  which  they  are  now  drifting. 

"If  we  look  on  the  other  and  still  darker  side  of 
the  shield  we  may  see  in  the  world  at  large  —  made 
up  for  the  most  part  of  those  whom  the  schools  have 
had  their  brief  chance  at  and  failed  to  hold  —  in 
competence  and  shiftlessness,  skilless  hands  that 
might  have  felt  the  simple  joys  of  intelligent  labor. 
I  do  not  know  that  human  joy  of  whatever  kind  is 
great,  or  pure,  or  lasting;  but  I  know  of  none  so 
great,  or  so  pure,  or  so  lasting  as  this  joy,  accessible 
alike  to  the  humblest  and  the  highest,  of  labor  in 
telligently  done.  But  now  instead  we  may  see  un- 
skill,  uninterest,  ignorance,  and  in  their  trail  poverty 


ioo  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

and  destitution.  The  tragedy  of  poverty  lies  not  so 
much  in  what  we  see  as  in  our  sense  that  it  tends  to 
reproduce  and  perpetuate  both  itself  and  the  state 
of  mind  which  produces  it,  in  the  children  whom  it 
brings  forth  in  such  vast  quantities. 

"Our  homely  democratic  sympathy,  then,  recog 
nizing  the  situation,  would  try  to  break  the  vicious 
circle  of  this  inbreeding  poverty  by  adjusting  the 
schools  to  the  thwarted  needs  which  lie  behind  it. 
Though  it  would  admit  that  no  system  could  do 
away  altogether  with  poverty,  yet  it  would  argue 
bluntly  against  whatever  impulses  preserve  a  dis 
cipline  which  serves  the  aspirations  of  only  those  who 
need  that  sympathy  least. 

"To  this  argument  from  principle  it  would  add 
another  based  on  the  necessary  practical  working  of 
the  democratic  regime.  The  democracy  is  of  course 
made  up  of  all  those  who  live  under  it  without  dis 
tinction  of  birth  or  wealth  or  aim.  But  since  the 
ideas  and  purposes  of  these  individuals  are  of  ne 
cessity  various  it  must  proceed  in  its  activities  on 
the  basis  of  majorities.  It  can  not  put  every  man's 
desires  into  laws.  The  minority  must  submit. 

"In  the  matter  of  the  schools,  then,  the  democ 
racy  should  logically  respond  to  the  needs  of  the 
majority.  And  we  have,  I  think,  explicit  indication 
of  those  needs  in  that  great  majority  %whom  the 
present  education  fails  to  hold  to  the  end.  The 
majority  must  first  of  all  make  a  living.  That  is 
their  duty,  not  only  to  themselves  but  to  their 
children  whom  they  arbitrarily  bring  into  the  world. 
And  that  is  their  duty  to  the  community  upon  which 
those  children  are  arbitrarily  thrust  for  better  or  for 


A  Modern  Paradox  101 

worse.  These  children  in  their  turn  for  the  most 
part  take  their  places  somewhere  in  the  industry  of 
the  community  —  one  a  farmer,  one  a  bookkeeper, 
one  a  mechanic,  one  a  housewife,  and  so  on,  ac 
cording  to  their  wants  and  needs  and  aspirations,  and 
those  harder  compulsions  that  arise  from  necessity. 
And  since  it  is  their  trained  aptitude  for  their  chosen 
tasks  that  determines  their  ultimate  condition,  the. 
democracy  which  would  not  only  govern  them  by 
the  restraints  and  adjustments  common  to  all  gov 
ernments,  but  would  proceed  on  its  own  dynamic 
principle  of  active  sympathy,  must,  it  seems  to  me  — 
here  where  it  has  its  intimate  personal  chance  to 
express  the  very  heart  of  its  ideal  —  take  its  ex 
pression  in  adjusting  its  schools  to  that  all  but  uni 
versal  need  of  making  a  living.  Democratic  educa 
tion,  then,  I  should  say,  is  a  training  for  vocation. 

"I  hope  I  may  not  weary  you  if  I  end  by  re 
iterating  my  criticism  of  the  schools  as  they  are  con 
ducted  to-day,  for  I  think  that  we  shall  never  attain 
to  a  genuine  democracy  until  we  have  made  our 
schools  democratic.  The  present  education  which 
they  afford,  wholly  or  partly  literary,  I  should  still 
call  aristocratic.  I  have  said  nothing  of  the  relative 
values  of  the  two  types  of  studies  for  those  who  now 
complete  the  public  school  course.  But  if  we  should 
suppose  that  the  present  course  met  the  wants  and 
needs  of  all  those  who  completed  it,  yet  they  are  so 
far  in  the  minority  that  it  stands,  it  seems  to  me, 
self-convicted  of  being  an  adjustment  to  the  de 
mands  of  the  few.  In  another  sense  also  it  is  aris 
tocratic.  It  is  —  pardon  my  bluntness  —  a  relic  of 
an  older  system  that  flourished  when  education  was 


iO2  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

an  aristocratic  privilege,  adjusted  to  the  needs  of  a 
privileged  class.  That  class  no  longer  exists.  Its 
habits  and  qualities  of  mind  are  not  to  be  despised 
perhaps,  but  they  are  for  the  few  who  have  leisure, 
not  for  the  many  who  must  win  a  livelihood.  And 
those  few  who  are  to  have  leisure  in  our  democracy 
can,  and  in  the  real  world  about  us  often  do,  obtain 
that  education  of  privilege  by  private  arrangement 
elsewhere.  And  so  the  education  of  our  existing 
schools,  growing  out  of  an  aristocratic  ideal,  and 
remaining  over  from  an  aristocratic  regime,  may  be 
suited  to  that  ideal  and  that  regime,  but  not  to  a 
democratic  ideal  and  a  democratic  regime.  As  a 
relic,  clinging  by  inertia  to  the  heart  of  the  new  or 
ganism,  it  clogs  the  free  action  of  that  organism. 
More  inharmoniously  still  it  functions  in  its  old  way. 
It  is  an  aristocratic  influence  in  the  midst  of  a 
striving  democracy. 

"Such  is  my  faith  about  these  matters  which  I 
believe  lie  close  to  the  interests  of  us  all.  We  are 
slowly  departing,  I  think,  from  that  older  sense  of 
society  in  which  a  government  was  felt  to  be  some 
thing  in  itself,  distinct  from  the  persons  who  lived 
under  it  —  an  entity  apart  and  aloof.  We  are 
coming  nearer  to  a  sense  that  it  is  an  arrangement, 
an  agreement,  between  free  individuals.  And  as  we 
come  nearer  to  those  individuals  we  perceive  that 
in  the  end  it  is  they  individually  who  are  the  largest 
conscious  entities  of  which  we  are  aware  —  they 
individually  who  think,  who  hope,  who  aspire,  and 
they  individually  who  feel  that  happiness,  or  blessed 
ness,  or,  by  whatever  name,  that  gratification  of  the 
consciousness  which  has  never  long  been  supplanted 


A  Modern  Paradox  103 

as  the  end  of  all  human  action.  In  democracy  I  see 
the  first  tentatives  in  the  direction  of  that  concern 
for  the  separate  man  which  would  seem  to  be  the 
only  logical  basis  of  government.  Our  democracy 
is  imperfect:  it  still  thinks  in  terms  of  government, 
saying  from  above  what  shall  be  the  wants  and  needs 
of  its  people;  it  still  thinks  in  terms  of  class,  edu 
cating  its  people  according  to  the  aspirations  of  a 
class.  But  I  see  that  mode  of  thought  slowly  break 
ing  up,  and  in  its  place  a  fluid  adjustment  to  that 
largest  conscious  entity  that  can  have  aspirations  to 
be  gratified  —  the  consciousness  of  the  individual 
man. 

"I  have  spoken  of  the  schools  because  it  is  there, 
and  there  almost  alone,  that  democracy,  the  essence 
of  it,  has  its  chance  at  the  thing  with  which  it 
sympathizes.  It  is  there  that  it  can  be  more  than 
passively  tolerant,  can  be  constructively  active,  can 
make  its  sympathies  dynamic  —  can,  in  a  word,  be 
democratic." 

He  ended  thus,  and  the  others  were  silent,  stirred 
by  that  quiet  emotion  that  goes  with  the  voyaging 
intellect.  They  had  listened  impressed,  each  con 
scious  of  a  sympathy  with  the  speaker  that  no  burst 
of  eloquence  could  have  roused  so  well  as  the 
simple,  appealing  reasonableness  of  his  manner  and 
his  words.  And  he  had  set  the  tone. 

The  host  turned  at  last  to  the  Grecian,  who  sat 
with  his  great  bulk  deep  in  his  chair,  his  eyes  resting 
curiously  upon  the  speaker.  He  was  a  fighter, 
though  a  fair  fighter,  and  the  others  looked  with  some 
apprehension  for  the  effect  upon  the  gentle  humani- 


104  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

tarian  of  the  clash  which  they  anticipated.  The  ex 
plosive  energy  that  swept  in  gusts  at  sudden  mo 
ments  across  his  speech,  was  often  disconcerting. 

"I  must  speak,"  he  began,  "in  a  sense  from  a 
place  aloof  and  apart,  and  speak  of  what  I  would 
have  rather  than  what  I  expect  to  have.  For  every 
one  is  agreed  that  the  organization  of  society  that  is 
called  aristocratic  has  had  its  day;  and  though  the 
term  has  a  derivative  meaning  that  is  not  without  its 
appeal,  it  has,  if  I  may  use  the  expression,  a  derived 
meaning  that  justly,  perhaps,  has  made  it  abhorrent. 
It  is,  at  least,  so  far  in  the  realm  of  lost  causes  that 
unless  I  can  win  to  my  aid  the  forces  of  humani 
tarian  sympathy  —  which  I  conceive  to  be  the  de 
termining  influences  of  the  time  —  I  must  be  ex 
onerated  from  seeming  to  plead  for  an  order  in  which 
I  have  personal  hopes  of  distinction." 

The  humanitarian  smiled  frankly,  and  they  all 
joined  him,  relieved,  seeing  in  the  unwonted  gentle 
ness  of  the  Grecian's  manner  and  the  quietness  of 
his  restraint  the  delicacy  with  which  he  had  adjusted 
himself  to  the  tone  set  by  the  sympathetic  humani 
tarian. 

"I  am  not  willing  wholly  to  forego,  however,"  he 
continued,  "the  pleasantness  of  that  derivative  mean 
ing  of  aristocracy,  though  that  meaning  is  largely 
ideal.  We  are  speaking  to-night  of  ideals.  But  there 
is  a  distinction  which  I  should  like  to  make  before 
going  on  to  its  defence.  I  utter  it  for  my  own  warn 
ing,  hoping  that  if  I  put  it  into  words  it  may  keep 
me  from  falling  into  the  worst  error  of  doctrinaire 
theorists.  It  is  not  infrequently  said  that  it  is  un- 


A  Modern  Paradox  105 

fair  and  illogical  to  compare  an  ideal  with  an  op 
posing  reality,  contrasting  the  crystalline  perfection 
of  the  one  with  the  living  defects  of  the  other.    And 
this   fallacy   I    find   myself   constantly   and   com 
placently  guilty  of.    But  in  escaping  from  this  fal 
lacy  it  is  easy  to  fall  into  a  slough  of  futility  in  com 
paring  ideal  with  ideal.    I  suppose  that  with  all  of 
us  our  social  ideals  in  their  purity  are  methods  of 
human  perfection.    And  so  since  our  ideas  of  hu 
man  perfection  are  not  likely,  for  us  here,  to  vary 
widely,  there  is  danger  of  the  inanity  of  comparing 
equally  perfect  things.    I  take  it,  however,  that  no 
living  institutions  are  perfect  —  that  defects  and 
deteriorations  are  inevitable,  however  flawless  the 
ideal.    The  quality  of  the  living  institution  depends 
upon  the  quality  of  the  human  nature  that  governs 
it;  and  to  admit  the  frailty  of  human  nature  has 
always  been  men's  chief  comfort.    And  so  when  we 
make  a  choice  of  systems  or  institutions  we  make  a 
choice  of  probable  defects  as  well  as  a  choice  of 
good.    Life  is,  in  this  sense,  a  matter  of  a  choice  of 
evils.    Our  logical  task  is  not,  then,  the  comparison 
of  ideals,  or  of  ideals  with  realities,  but  rather,  in  so 
far  as  possible,  to  discover  the  probable  mean,  and 
compare  attainables  with  attainables. 

"I  must,  however,  speak  first  of  the  aristocratic 
ideal,  for  it  is  the  one  thing  sufficiently  stable  to 
base  my  structure  upon.  I  need  not  search  for  this 
ideal  beyond  the  word  itself,  and  I  affirm  it  to  be, 
as  the  word  implies,  government  by  the  best.  I 
need  not  dwell  long  upon  such  familiar  ground,  but 
before  I  go  on  to  its  defence  I  should  like  to  men 
tion  the  equally  familiar  form  which  this  ideal  has 


io6  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

normally  taken.  It  has  never,  historically,  quite 
lived  up  to  Plato's  description  of  the  aristocratic 
organization,  but  it  has  largely  resembled  it.  In 
that  description  there  is  the  provision,  so  hard  to 
democratic  ears,  that  men  shall  tend  to  remain  in 
the  condition  to  which  they  were  born.  The  aristo 
cratic  order  of  society  is  the  arrangement  of  the  or 
ganism,  with  definite  and  stable  gradations  from 
bottom  to  top.  And  at  the  top  are  those  who,  by 
leisure,  by  training,  by  freedom  from  the  narrower 
cares  of  livelihood,  and  by  a  kind  of  specialization 
in  the  large  relations  of  humanity,  govern  the  or 
ganism  and  set  the  standard  and  the  tone  for  the 
whole.  This  is,  in  very  brief,  the  aristocratic  ideal. 

"I  mention  this  in  the  beginning,  and  mention  it 
thus  bluntly,  for  I  wish  at  the  outset  to  strike  the 
harshest  note  in  the  harmony  to  which  this  system 
tries  to  attain.  The  reality  itself  is  not  so  harsh  as 
the  ideal  —  a  relationship  which  I  suspect  to  be  re 
versed  in  the  democratic  regime.  I  might  point  out 
that  in  the  aristocracy  from  which  we  democratically 
rebelled  the  roll  of  its  great  men  has  from  the  earliest 
times  largely  traversed  this  ideal  stability.  Black- 
stone  boasts  of  it.  Whatever  softening  effect  this 
fact  may  have,  however,  upon  the  severity  of  the 
aristocratic  ideal,  and  whatever  corollaries  might  be 
drawn  as  to  the  conditions  which  produce  great  men, 
I  shall  pass,  over  them  for  the  present  because  of 
another  significance  which  I  see  in  this  traversal  of 
the  aristocratic  system  —  that  aristocracy  adapts 
itself  to  human  nature  as  it  is.  Its  premises  are 
reality,  not  a  faith. 

"I  should  like  you  to  examine  this  reality  at  the 


A  Modern  Paradox  107 

base  of  the  structure.  Democracy  is  founded  on  a 
belief  in  the  perfections  of  human  nature;  aristoc 
racy,  on  a  sense  of  its  imperfections.  Aristocracy 
builds  upon  the  imperfections  even  of  those  in  whose 
interests  it  seems  to  be  established.  And  now  you 
will  see,  perhaps,  another  reason  why  I  was  so  eager 
to  avoid  a  comparison  of  ideals  and  a  comparison  of 
perfections.  Aristocracy,  based  upon  sordid  reality, 
would,  in  such  comparisons,  seem  dull  and  grey  be 
side  the  glowing  colours,  the  moving  ideality  of  the 
democratic  faith.  I  could  hope  but  little  to  touch 
your  sympathies. 

"This,  however,  is  by  the  way.  What  I  wish  to 
point  out  is  the  underlying  fact  —  that  democracy 
is  based  on  ideals  and  aristocracy  on  realities  —  that 
democracy  builds  upon  its  ideals,  and  aristocracy 
builds  toward  its  ideals.  That  is  why,  as  I  conceive, 
real  aristocracies  have  always  been  of  slow  growth 
while  democracies  have  sprung  up  in  sudden  revolts. 
The  one  is  based  upon  the  more  permanant  traits 
of  human  nature,  and  the  other  upon  sudden  bursts 
of  enthusiasm  stirred  by  the  nobility  of  a  generous 
conception.  Democracy  rises  while  that  enthusiasm 
is  at  white  heat,  and  lasts  until  it  cools.  Then  as 
the  democratic  impulse  dies,  and  the  normal  range 
of  human  qualities  and  defects  regain  their  normal 
proportions,  the  tendency  sets  in  again  toward  aris 
tocracy.  I  should  say  that  if  this  is  true  aristocracy 
has  a  deeper,  more  solid,  more  permanent,  and  surer 
foundation  than  democracy. 

"All  this,  however,  has  in  itself,  I  am  aware,  a 
theoretic  ring.  To  bring  it  back  to  actuality,  then, 
I  should  like  to  cite  the  realities  upon  which  aris- 


io8  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

tocracy  seems  to  me  to  be  based.  If  the  best-laid 
plans  of  men  go  agley  because  of  human  weakness 
and  imperfections,  I  can  hardly  cite  more  relevant 
realities  for  the  starting  point  of  any  scheme  than 
just  these  weaknesses  and  imperfections.  It  is  upon 
a  calculation  of  these  realities  that  aristocracy  is 
based. 

The  greatest  of  them  is,  perhaps,  the  one  we  have 
just  considered  in  another  light  —  the  impermanence 
of  generous  motives  as  compared  with  the  constant 
and  inevitable  pressure  of  selfish  motives.  If  we 
are  to  have  government  —  and  I  suppose  that  we  all 
contemplate  government  in  our  schemes  —  some  one 
must  attend  to  its  administration.  Government  is 
hardly  a  simple  task  that  can  be  done  offhand.  It 
must  contemplate  the  whole  range  of  complex  human 
relations  that  hold  within  the  wide  scope  of  a  nation. 
And  if  just  and  equitable  action  is  hard  to  attain  to 
in  single  instances,  as  it  is  shown  to  be  daily  in  the 
law  courts  where  the  circumstances  are  simple  and 
defined,  the  just  and  equitable  administration  of  the 
far  more  complex  affairs  of  a  whole  people  will  re 
quire  a  great  and  penetrating  wisdom. 

"To  meet  this  demand  an  aristocracy  —  I  speak 
of  the  accomplished  fact,  for  aristocracy  is  the  result 
of  slow  and  natural  adjustments,  not  of  deliberate 
plan  —  provides  selfish  motives  for  those  who  train 
themselves  for  the  arduous  duties  and  responsi 
bilities  of  government.  It  gives  them  honour,  rank, 
title,  wealth,  leisure,  and  it  gives  them  freedom  to 
pursue  the  widest  variety  of  individual  aspirations. 
For  this  class  the  public  interest  is  its  private  inter 
est.  To  maintain  its  privileges  it  must  train  itself  to 


A  Modern  Paradox  109 

maintain  its  power.  And  since  in  the  nature  of  the 
case  the  members  of  this  class  are  few,  it  must  main 
tain  its  power  by  qualities  of  mind.  They  become 
a  specialized  class  whose  business  it  is  to  govern, 
and  to  cultivate  those  finer  aptitudes  and  percep 
tions  and  appreciations  which  are  necessary  to  the 
understanding  of  the  varied  interests  and  relations 
with  which  they  have  to  deal. 

"I  know  that  there  is  something  exasperating  in 
this  frank  manner  of  putting  my  case  —  that  aris 
tocracy  builds  upon  the  sordid  realities  of  human 
self-interest.  It  seems  to  try  to  take  the  wind  from 
the  sails  of  criticism.  None  the  less  I  have  fallen 
into  it  because  it  seems  to  me  to  grow  out  of  the 
reality  of  the  situation.  I  should,  I  think,  rather  be 
ashamed  of  it  if  it  were  but  a  device  of  my  argument. 
But  in  the  mixed  quality  of  human  affairs  I  see  in 
this  unlovely  reality  of  human  selfishness  at  least 
the  virtues  of  permanence  and  stability  —  virtues 
imperative  in  solid  foundations.  Aristocracy,  how 
ever,  justifies  itself,  not  upon  the  basis  from  which 
it  builds,  but  upon  the  quality  of  the  product  at 
which  it  aims.  It  is  because  I  believe  that  an  aris 
tocracy  has  a  higher  aim  than  a  democracy,  and  has 
a  more  reasonable  chance  of  accomplishing  its  aim, 
that  I  believe  in  the  aristocratic  order  of  society. 
Let  me  then  try  to  justify  myself  by  explaining  this 
aim  and  this  reasonable  hope  of  its  accomplishment. 

"Out  of  the  selfishness  of  these  underlying  mo 
tives,  and  out  of  the  leisure  and  training  which  they 
provide,  it  seems  to  me  reasonable  to  suppose  that  a 
finer  product  can  emerge  than  is  possible  in  a  regime 
in  which  everyone  has  to  divide  his  interests,  and 


no  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

having  to  make  his  way  by  some  narrower  pursuit, 
must  devote  time  and  interest  to  it  that  might  be 
devoted  to  the  larger  cultivation  of  his  mind.  This 
statement  sounds  harsh,  I  know.  It  is  harsh.  But 
I  think  it  is  simply  the  harshness  of  truth.  It  is 
possible  to  doubt,  I  suppose,  whether  this  concen 
tration  upon  the  wider  interests,  the  larger  relations, 
of  humanity  will  produce  a  more  perfect  understand 
ing  of  them.  Yet  I  believe  that  none  of  us  do  doubt 
it.  Even  the  humanitarians  have  assumed  the  prin 
ciple  that  specialization  makes  for  a  more  perfect 
understanding  and  greater  ability  in  those  whom  he 
would  train  for  more  intelligent  labor.  It  is  but 
logical  to  suppose  that  a  body  of  people  who  can  be 
relieved  of  other  necessities  and  can  thus  devote 
themselves  to  this  wider  discipline  will  attain  to  the 
qualities  it  aims  at  more  perfectly  than  those  whose 
discipline  is  divided. 

"It  is  perhaps  more  reasonable  to  doubt  that  this 
particular  type  of  attainment  is  a  nobler  thing  than 
that  of  the  dual  discipline  of  a  democracy.  Yet  I 
believe  that  you  have  no  real  doubts  even  here. 
You  believe  that  to  grasp  the  wider  relations  of  life 
requires  a  finer  type  of  mind.  At  least  in  every  or 
ganized  activity  or  trade  you  put  the  finer  mind  at 
the  head  where  the  larger  relations  have  to  be  mas 
tered  and  governed,  and  you  consign  the  individual 
tasks  to  the  simpler  minds.  If  this  is  so  —  if  we  do 
feel  this  larger  grasp  to  be  the  nobler  thing  —  I 
think  that  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  a 
system  which  disciplines  its  rulers  to  a  more  perfect 
grasp  of  this  nobler  thing  and  tends  to  make  their 
ideas  prevail  will  produce  a  more  perfect  civilization. 


A  Modern  Paradox  in 

This  is  the  end  proposed  for  itself  by  an  aristocracy. 
This  is  the  attainment  upon  which  it  rests  its  justifi 
cation. 

"Certainly  we  could  hope  for  such  an  attainment 
if  other  things  were  equal.  But  it  is  the  aristocratic 
belief  that  other  things  are  not  equal,  and  that  that 
inequality  is  in  favor  of  the  aristocracy.  In  the 
large  it  is  said  to  be  the  biological  tendency  for  kind 
to  reproduce  kind.  If  this  is  true,  then  those  who  in 
the  slow  evolution  of  an  aristocracy  have  become  by 
qualities  of  mind  members  of  the  ruling  class  will 
tend  to  reproduce  others  of  the  same  kind.  But  I 
should  not  hold  to  this.  It  may  be  after  all  that  by 
gifts  of  birth  one  class  is  much  like  another.  Even 
so,  however,  the  subtle  influences  that  surround  a 
child  born  to  this  class  can  not  in  a  sense  but  fa 
miliarize  him  from  birth  with  the  broader  and  nobler 
type  of  consideration.  And  when  we  know  that  this 
child,  whose  thoughts  from  the  cradle  have  been 
formed  on  these  broader  lines,  is  put  for  many  years 
through  a  formal  discipline  on  these  same  lines,  we 
may  expect  from  the  class  to  which  he  belongs, 
made  up  of  others  of  the  same  training,  a  higher 
type  of  accomplishment  than  could  come  from  the 
general  mass  of  the  democracy  whose  training  has 
perforce  been  divided.  It  has  specialized,  so  to 
speak,  on  the  noblest  range  of  human  thought, 
prompted  in  a  large  sense  by  the  same  motives  that 
drive  the  citizens  of  a  democracy  to  specialize  on 
narrower  lines.  And  so  I  think  we  may  expect  from 
it  the  cultivation  of  a  finer  product. 

"I  know  that  this  contemplates  a  corresponding 
restriction  upon  the  rest  of  the  people  of  an  aris- 


H2  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

tocracy.  But  an  aristocracy  looks  to  degree  and  not 
to  quantity.  If  it  were  possible  to  add  the  wisdom 
of  two  men  together,  or  of  a  million  men,  as  it  is 
possible  to  add  their  strength  or  their  wealth,  then 
a  class  might  be  wiser  than  its  ideal  teacher,  Plato's 
disciples  wiser  than  Plato,  as  a  regiment  is  stronger 
than  its  colonel;  and  a  democracy  might  be  wiser 
than  an  aristocracy.  But  faculties  of  the  mind  are 
a  matter  of  quality,  not  of  quantity,  and  no  amount 
of  lesser  degrees  added  together  can  equal  the  attain 
ment  of  a  single  mind  cultivated  to  a  higher  degree. 

"There  is,  then,  to  stimulate  this  high  degree  of 
attainment,  the  strong  motive  of  self-preservation, 
or  class  preservation.  And  there  arises,  too,  out  of 
this  situation  a  class  consciousness  by  which  a  code 
is  established  —  a  code  of  manners,  of  honour,  and 
of  intellectual  attainment.  In  following  this  code  a 
man  may  have  no  higher  motive  than  to  identify 
himself  with  his  class,  but  this  motive  is,  I  believe, 
one  of  the  most  powerful  known  to  men.  The  devil 
of  loneliness  has  us  all  in  his  grip,  and  moves  us, 
through  the  devices  of  speech,  or  dress,  or  badge,  or 
manner,  or  attainment,  to  proclaim  our  affiliations  — 
to  cry  out  to  all  the  world  that  we  belong. 

"Collectively  for  the  aristocrat  there  is  the  need 
to  keep  this  code  purified  and  elevated,  both  because 
successful  policy  is  founded  on  clear  thinking  and 
sound  principle,  and  because  pride  of  place  and 
self-respect  are  most  permanently  founded  on  solid 
grounds.  Stimulus  to  develop,  coupled  with  oppor 
tunity  to  develop,  and  these  joined  to  a  select  public 
opinion  that  gives  a  high  aim  to  that  development, 
and  all  this  disjoined  from  any  need  to  truckle  to 


A  Modern  Paradox  113 

the  untrained  simply  because  they  are  many  and 
powerful  —  these  influences,  I  believe,  will  make 
for  a  higher  degree  of  attainment  than  the  influences 
that  hold  in  a  democracy. 

"I  am  not  without  my  own  smile  at  the  colors  of 
this  picture  that  I  have  drawn.  None  the  less  I 
have  laid  them  on  wittingly,  believing  that  they 
paint  certain  tendencies  that  do  not  exist,  or  do 
not  exist  in  so  high  a  degree,  in  a  democracy.  I  can 
not  see  in  the  democratic  theory  provision  for  just 
these  ends  which  to  the  aristocrat  are  the  noblest 
aims  of  society.  And  in  the  democratic  reality  about 
us  it  seems  to  me  that  as  we  recede  farther  and 
farther  from  the  aristocratic  tradition  there  is  less 
and  less  provision  and  less  and  less  concern  for  these 
ends. 

"In  a  democracy  it  is  the  average  that  obtains 
rather  than  the  best.  For  a  time  after  its  founda 
tion,  while  the  aristocratic  respect  for  the  best  still 
tinges  the  habitual  thoughts  of  the  many,  they  try  to 
elevate  to  positions  of  trust  those  who  by  quality 
and  training  are  recognizable  as  superior.  But  as 
time  goes  on  and  the  many  realize  more  and  more 
their  own  will  and  their  own  power,  they  grow  mis 
trustful  of  a  superiority  which  they  do  not  under 
stand.  And  they  put  into  power  those  who,  they 
believe,  more  nearly  resemble  themselves  —  or  more 
likely  and  worse,  the  clever  and  unscrupulous  who 
can  flatter  and  deceive  them  into  such  a  belief. 
Then,  as  they  see  the  corruption  of  the  incompetent 
or  unscrupulous  whom  they  have  elevated  into  office, 
they  refuse  to  take  it  as  an  evidence  of  their  own 
unwisdom,  but  come  more  and  more  to  mistrust  the 


ii4  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

institution  of  representative  and  deliberative  gov 
ernment.  They  demand  that  legislators  and  ex 
ecutives  cease  acting  on  their  own  wisdom  and  be 
come  the  automatic  mouthpieces  of  the  popular  will. 
In  time  they  go  still  farther  and  demand  the  count 
of  noses  in  the  recall  and  referendum.  At  this  stage 
they  have  ultimate  assurance  that  the  ideas  that  are 
enforced  shall  be  the  spontaneous  average  of  the 
wisdom  of  the  community. 

"Now  it  is  inevitable  that  this  average  shall  be 
less  elevated,  less  wise,  than  the  best  —  even  than 
the  best  existing  in  the  community.  For  the  com 
munity  may  be  supposed  to  contain  the  normal  range 
of  humanity,  from  high  to  low;  and  averages  are 
inevitably  lower  than  the  highest.  If  democracy  is 
the  expression  of  the  average  it  is  the  establishment 
of  mediocrity.  Democracy  is  mediocrity.  It  is  so 
by  its  own  theory. 

"I  can  think  of  no  injustice  deeper  or  more  sweep 
ing  than  the  condemnation  of  a  whole  people  to  the 
levels  of  mediocrity.  It  is  inbreeding.  It  forms  a 
vicious  circle.  Youth  grows  up  to  it.  The  educa 
tion  of  the  masses  responds  to  it.  Literature  and  art 
cater  to  it.  And  these  influences  in  turn  intensify 
it.  The  finer  minds  must  sink  toward  it  or  be  with 
out  influence.  As  I  look  about  me  at  the  democracy 
I  see  only  confirmations  of  this  belief.  I  see  less  and 
less  concern  for  the  nobler  thoughts  and  attainments 
of  the  past,  more  and  more  catering  of  the  school  to 
the  lower  wants  of  the  people,  more  and  more  popu 
larity  for  mediocre  books  and  mediocre  plays. 
Mediocrity  is  in  the  saddle.  It  rides  roughshod 
over  the  finer  aspirations  of  those  who  are,  as  many 


A  Modern  Paradox  115 

are,  above  the  average;  it  tramples  the  nascent  pos 
sibilities  of  many  who  might,  by  inborn  traits,  rise 
to  the  nobler  levels  of  thought;  it  destroys  the  fine 
ness  of  the  spectacle  of  life  for  those  who  are  born 
to  inferiority.  It  is  a  ruthless  swashbuckler  among 
the  refinements  of  life.  It  is  a  tyranny. 

"An  aristocracy  justifies  itself,  not  primarily  on 
personal  grounds,  but  upon  the  belief  that  the  ideas 
which  it  makes  prevail  are  finer  and  more  elevated 
ideas  than  the  average  ideas  —  not  the  ideas  of 
mediocrity  but  the  ideas  of  the  best.  It  believes 
that  the  reaction  of  these  prevailing  finer  opinions 
upon  the  community  is  in  reality  a  more  elevating 
and  nobler  influence  than  that  of  the  opinions  of  the 
democracy  —  that  it  tends  to  create  a  finer  populace. 
It  establishes  standards.  It  raises  the  whole  people. 

"In  the  ideal  organization  of  an  aristocracy,  with 
its  classes  below  the  governing  class  in  nice  gradation 
from  the  bottom  upward,  every  function  of  society 
would  tend,  by  virtue  of  specialization,  to  be  per 
formed  more  perfectly.  Is  this  hard  upon  those 
below  the  top?  If  it  is,  still  here  is  the  striking 
point  —  that  we  have  the  spectacle  of  such  an  actual 
gradation  in  the  democracy  about  us.  It  seems 
harsh  indeed  to  recognize  such  subordinations  by 
law;  but  the  reality  remains  the  same.  And  the 
aristocratic  condemnation  of  every  man  to  a  par 
ticular  range  of  development  —  reprieved  in  cases 
of  exceptional  ability  or  promise  —  has  personal 
compensations  in  the  more  perfect  discipline  which 
it  involves.  Happiness  is  not  the  result  of  particular 
definable  circumstances,  but  of  the  nice  adjustment 
to  circumstances. 


n6  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"No  actual  aristocracy,  moreover,  has  been  so 
rigidly  organized  that  exception  has  not  been  pos 
sible  where  unusual  ability  has  made  an  actual  mal 
adjustment.  Chaucer's  father,  they  say,  was  a 
liquor  dealer;  Woolsey's  was  an  Ipswich  butcher. 
Even  Plato's  ideal  organization  made  provision  for 
such  shifts.  And  so,  however  harsh  the  aristocratic 
scheme  sounds  in  cool  exposition,  there  is  some 
reason  to  believe  that  in  the  attainable  reality  there 
would  emerge  a  higher  average  quality,  a  greater 
personal  happiness,  and  perhaps  a  surer  elevation  of 
talent  and  genius,  than  is  prevalent  in  a  democracy. 

"Your  ruthless  aristocrat,  building  thus  not  solely 
upon  an  ideal,  but  trying  to  get  the  best  out  of  hu 
manity  as  he  finds  it,  with  its  conflicting  weaknesses 
and  aspirations,  sees  another  fact  in  the  reality  be 
fore  him  that  relieves  his  possible  compunctions. 
He  sees  that  the  wants  and  needs  and  aspirations  of 
the  great  mass  of  the  people  —  to  omit  those  ex 
ceptions  of  which  I  have  just  spoken  —  correspond 
strikingly  with  the  position  to  which  aristocracy 
would  condemn  them.  They  might,  and  no  doubt 
would  as  they  do  even  now,  rage  in  personal  resent 
ment  against  the  asserted  superiority  of  those  who 
were  above  them ;  but  they  do  not  want  the  qualities 
that  create  that  superiority.  They  want  what  they 
now  have,  only  in  greater  quantity;  and  it  is  to  this 
that  aristocracy  would  condemn  them. 

"In  looking  into  the  evidence  of  this  dark  saying, 
I  come  to  the  most  painful  part  of  my  defense.  I 
know,  however,  that  you  will  forgive  my  bluntness. 
You  smiled  when  I  began  by  saying  that  aristocracy 
was  a  lost  cause  unless  it  could  win  to  its  aid  the 


A  Modern  Paradox  117 

forces  of  humanitarian  sympathy  which  are  the  de 
termining  influences  of  the  time.  Well,  they  have 
come  to  its  aid.  The  training  for  vocation  which 
they  would  substitute  in  the  schools  of  the  democ 
racy  in  place  of  the  literary  studies  is  just  the  train 
ing  that  genuine  aristocrats,  if  they  had  their  way, 
would  force  upon  the  many  as  the  quickest  means  of 
creating  their  aristocracy. 

"The  aristocrat  believes,  let  me  repeat,  that  the 
best  form  of  society  is  one  in  which  every  part  is 
trained  to  fill  its  own  niche  and  perform  its  own 
function  —  one  man  a  shoemaker,  another  a  farmer, 
and  so  on  throughout  —  and  at  the  top  those  whose 
training  has  been  broad  enough  to  enable  them  to 
see  widely  the  whole  field,  and  control  the  relation 
ships  between  the  specialized  parts.  It  is,  to  repeat 
the  comparison  from  your  own  practice  where  you 
are  really  concerned  for  the  fineness  of  the  product, 
the  organization  of  the  factory.  The  method  to  that 
end,  in  the  slow,  imperceptible  growth  of  aristocracy, 
would  be  to  train  a  farmer  to  be  a  farmer,  a  me 
chanic  to  be  a  mechanic,  and  so  on  throughout,  dis 
placing  with  instruction  to  that  end  the  wider  dis 
cipline  which  would  tend  to  direct  his  mind  to  larger 
and  more  universal  matters.  The  more  narrowly  is 
he  limited  to  a  training  for  the  one  niche  which  he 
is  to  fill,  the  more  snugly  will  he  fill  that  niche,  and 
the  more  will  he  be  dependent  upon  that  niche  for 
his  place  in  the  social  scheme.  He  will  fit  no  other 
niche.  He  will  be  fixed  in  that  one  place.  He  will 
be  subordinated  to  those  who,  disciplined  to  a  com 
prehensive  view  of  the  whole,  will  have  the  direction 
of  the  whole.  Vocational  training  is  a  training  for 


n8  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

that  end.    It  is  par  excellence  the  aristocratic  edu 
cation." 

He  paused  for  a  moment  after  the  heated  flow  of 
his  talk,  and  when  he  resumed  it  was  in  a  quieter 
tone. 

"You  have  felt,  I  think,  that  the  aristocratic  ideal 
is  heartless.  And  yet  I  believe  that  it  may  claim  for 
itself  all  the  sympathy  which  the  humanitarians 
claim  as  the  basis  of  their  modifications  of  the 
schools.  The  humanitarians  would  act  in  sympathy 
with  the  wants  and  needs  and  aspirations  of  the 
many,  and  consulting  them  find  that  they  want  and 
need  and  aspire  to  those  things  which  vocational 
training  can  bring  them.  The  aristocrat  too  would 
respond  to  just  those  wants  and  needs  and  aspira 
tions.  He  believes  them  to  be  genuine.  He  believes 
that  the  mass  of  the  people  are  right  even  though 
they  do  deceive  themselves  by  calling  this  demand 
for  vocational  training  democratic.  They  have  a 
way  of  calling  what  they  want  by  names  which  they 
like.  It  is  a  flattering  deception,  but  it  does  not 
alter  the  facts. 

"If  they  want  democracy  they  must  want  the 
general  spread  of  those  qualities  of  mind  which 
make  for  a  wide  grasp  of  the  relationships  which 
hold  within  the  broad  range  of  a  whole  people.  But 
they  do  not  want  those  qualities.  And  their  in 
stinctive  wants  are  right.  They  know,  if  not  re 
flectively  yet  definitely  and  instinctively,  that  they 
are  not  fitted  for  those  larger  views  of  life  demanded 
of  those  who  control  and  those  who  create  and  en 
courage  the  finer  products  of  the  human  spirit. 


A  Modern  Paradox  119 

What  they  want,  as  we  have  but  now  been  told,  are 
things  of  the  body.  What  they  are  able  to  ap 
preciate  are  jobs  and  things  measurable  in  money. 
They  have  no  fitness  and  no  desire  for  those  things 
which  the  literary  studies  of  the  older  education 
aimed  at.  Not  all,  there  are  many  noble  exceptions, 
but  in  general.  They  have  tried  them  in  their  first 
reaction  against  aristocracy,  asserting  that  the  es 
sence  of  democracy  was  the  universal  right  to  those 
things  which  the  aristocracy  had  reserved  for  itself. 
But  they  have  not  really  wanted  them  —  the  things 
themselves.  And  as  they  have  come  farther  and 
farther  away  from  the  impulse  of  reaction,  and  have 
realized  more  and  more  their  freedom  to  have  what 
they  really  want,  they  have  chosen  according  to 
their  kind,  chosen  the  things  which  they  had  before, 
chosen  the  things  which  a  ruling  class  would  give 
them  again. 

"Incidentally  they  have  justified  the  aristocratic 
contention  that  a  permanent  democracy  is  im 
possible  —  that  the  movement  of  democracy,  after 
its  first  spiritual  reaction,  is  inevitably  toward  the 
cultivation  of  its  lower  needs.  It  disguises  these 
needs  in  elevated  phrases.  It  speaks  of  the  dignity 
of  labour.  It  proclaims  the  equal  worthiness  of  all 
necessary  tasks.  It  idealizes  a  standard  of  living. 
And  it  settles  itself  to  the  systematic  gratification  of 
its  sensuous  wants,  leaving  the  cultivation  of  the 
spirit  again  to  the  few.  Insensibly  thus,  amid  the 
shouting  of  its  old  sacred  words,  which  have  little 
by  little  lost  their  old  meaning,  it  slips  back  into 
the  control  of  those  who  have  cultivated  their  gen 
eral  intelligence. 


I2O  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"It  looks  back  to  the  founders  of  the  democracy 
from  whose  ideas  it  has  defected  —  its  Washingtons 
and  its  Hamiltons  —  and  calls  them  aristocrats  be 
cause  their  idea  was  to  spread  to  everyone  the  ideals 
that  had  before  been  the  possession  of  the  aristo 
cratic  few.  It  chooses  for  its  present  leaders  those 
who  assert  the  Tightness  and  nobility  of  its  own 
tendencies.  They  hasten  its  progress  in  the  way  it 
is  going.  Once  it  has  become  self-conscious  of  its 
own  desires,  hearing  them  put  into  words  by  its 
leaders,  it  puts  them  into  accelerated  effect  in  its 
training  of  the  young.  This  is  the  decisive  step. 

"In  the  end  the  thing  to  do  is  to  do  nothing.  Aris 
tocracy  springs  from  evolution,  not  from  revolution. 
The  democracy  by  its  own  will,  though  blindly  and 
in  self-deception,  .is  bringing  about  the  end  which 
the  aristocrat  desires.  It  is  training  its  children  to 
take  definite  niches  in  the  social  scheme  by  limiting 
the  training  of  their  intelligence  to  the  narrow  range 
of  specialized  tasks.  It  calls  this  training  "educa 
tion,"  believing  by  hearsay  that  education  is  the 
bulwark  of  democracy.  It  has  forgotten  that  when 
this  truth  was  uttered  the  word  education  meant  the 
broad  training  of  the  intelligence  by  those  disin 
terested  studies  which  direct  the  mind  toward  the 
larger  relations  of  men.  And  going  forward  in  this 
blind  and  mistaken  faith,  it  is  narrowing  the  outlook 
of  its  children  by  centering  their  attention  upon  a 
narrower  and  narrower  range  of  ideas  as  they  re 
form  the  schools  more  and  more  on  vocational  lines. 
It  does,  indeed,  soothe  its  conscience  by  giving  them 
incidentally  a  superficial  smattering  of  many  things 
of  the  higher  order  —  language,  government,  his- 


A  Modern  Paradox  121 

tory,  sociology  —  but  its  heart  is  not  there.  They 
emerge  with  a  false  sense  of  having  mastered  what 
only  a  long  and  dire  discipline  can  give  them  the 
foundation  of;  and  their  shallow,  jejune,  and  con 
fident  utterances  but  confirm  the  belief  that  that 
little  had  best  been  unlearned.  Gross  ignorance  is 
not  so  insidious.  Still  the  thing  to  do  is  to  do 
nothing.  This  training  not  only  fits  them  better  to 
their  little  niches,  but  it  makes  them  content.  It  is 
better  than  the  Roman  way  of  keeping  them  quiet 
with  bread  and  circuses.  Instead  of  being  a  drain 
upon  the  treasury  it  gets  work  out  of  them,  and  in 
creasingly  efficient  work. 

"Such  is  my  defence.  And  if  in  the  end  I  find 
myself  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the  humanitarian, 
whose  gentle  and  generous  sympathies  have  won  us 
all,  I  should  like  to  share  in  the  approval  which  those 
sympathies  command.  Though  I  have  proved  my 
partisanship  by  another  route  I  have  come  to  the 
same  conclusion  in  the  end.  I  believe  that  an  aris 
tocracy  would  make  for  a  happiness  far  more  real 
and  permanent  than  does  the  present  order  of 
society.  The  unrest,  the  uncertainty  as  to  where 
one  belongs,  the  chagrin  at  finding  oneself  too  near 
the  top  of  the  table,  the  offensiveness  of  those 
clamorous  to  assert  their  equality,  the  elevation  of 
the  unworthy,  the  vaulting  ambition  that  o'erleaps 
itself,  the  unskill  that  finds  no  joy  in  labour,  the 
precariousness  of  the  disinterested  pursuits,  the  ab 
sence  of  organized  encouragement  for  the  nobler 
activities  of  the  spirit  —  all  these  causes  of  unhap- 
piness  aristocracy  would  tend  to  reduce.  It  would 
have  its  own  tendency  to  self-indulgence  and  the 


122  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

relaxation  of  its  exigent  standards.  But  there  would 
be  its  own  selfishness  to  spur  it  on  to  the  tmly  means 
it  would  possess  for  maintaining  its  own  power  and 
privilege  —  the  cultivation  of  the  mind  to  a  gen 
uine  superiority. 

"From  such  a  class,  setting  standards  "of  taste 
and  intellect,  the  better  products  of  art  and  litera 
ture  could  be  assured  of  encouragement  which  the 
democracy  seems  less  and  less  inclined  to  extend. 
If  truckling  there  were,  it  would  be  a  truckling  to 
minds  that  were  trained,  not  to  minds  that  were  un 
trained,  to  a  class  with  cultivated  standards,  not  to 
a  mass  with  no  standards.  The  leaders  of  the  nation, 
looking  down  from  an  assured  position,  would  no 
longer  have  to  call  things  by  wrong  names  to  win 
the  suffrage  of  the  ignorant  —  would  no  longer  call 
ability  to  read,  literacy;  apprenticeship,  education; 
glibness  about  art,  culture;  governmental  aid  to 
private  interests,  democracy.  Spades  would  be 
spades,  and  the  implements  of  thought,  words,  could 
retain  their  real  value  to  the  rescue  of  clear  thinking. 

"For  these  reasons  and  for  many  more  I  believe 
in  aristocracy.  And  in  this  belief  I  cast  my  vote 
with  the  humanitarians  in  favour  of  that  training 
of  the  people  to  vocation,  which  marks  the  final 
departure  from  the  democratic  ideal,  and  the  in 
ception  of  the  aristocratic  evolution." 

He  ceased,  and  they  sat  staring  at  the  fire.  The 
host  glanced  at  the  humanitarian  and  read  in  his 
face,  perhaps  out  of  his  own  mind,  a  chagrin  that 
contained  no  resentment,  but  no  less  a  chagrin,  that 
pulled  at  the  corners  of  his  mouth,  and  held  his  eyes 
in  brooding  concentration  upon  depths  far  within 


A  Modern  Paradox  123 

the  glow,  of  the  fire.  He  had  a  fleeting  sense  that 
the  aristocrat  had  been  too  hard  upon  his  gentle 
victim,  followed  by  a  surer  sense  that  nothing  but  a 
love  of  fair  play  could  have  led. him  to  impress  so 
harshly  upon  the"  generous  humanitarian  the  de 
ception  by  which  he^was  guided. 

The  pause  which  followed  was  so  painful  that 
when  the  moment  of  precipitancy  was  past  the  host 
turned  to  the  democrat  of  the  older  school.  It  was 
understood  by  now  that  they  were  to  have  it  out 
from  all  sides. 

"Will  you  let  me,"  he  began  somewhat  briskly, 
relieving  the  tension  of  the  moment  by  his  dry, 
driving  manner,  "will  you  let  me  state  my  whole 
case  even  though  it  covers  ground  that  has  been  trod 
more  than  once  to-night?  There  will  be  an  ap 
pearance  of  repetition,  but  there  will  also,  I  think, 
emerge  differences  that  can  best  be  detected  in  their 
logical  setting.  And  these  differences  are  the  bent 
of  the  twig. 

"As  to  my  own  plea,  then  —  curiously  I  have 
found  myself,  as  I  have  listened  to  the  defence  of 
the  humanitarian  movement  and  the  defence  of 
aristocracy,  more  often  agreeing  with  the  aristocrat 
than  with  the  democrat  —  with  his  logic  I  mean. 
Yet  curiously  again,  in  the  end  it  is  they  who  are 
partisans  and  I  who  stand  alone.  The  alignments 
are  strangely  complex. 

"I  am  democratic  in  my  social  faith.  I  too  be 
lieve  that  the  constant  character  of  democracy  is 
its  opposition  to  the  aristocratic  suppression  of  the 
masses.  I  have,  therefore,  no  love  for  aristocracy, 


124  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

but  I  believe  that  it  had  among  its  evils  some  very 
real  virtues.  It  accepted  responsibilities.  My 
criticism  of  aristocracy,  even  if  I  could  approve  its 
fundamental  theory,  would  be  of  its  human  tendency, 
from  which  democracy  is  not  free,  to  self-indulgence. 
If  we  are,  therefore,  as  has  been  said,  to  compare 
attainables  with  attainables,  I  need  not,  I  think, 
cite  specific  examples  to  show  that  revolts  against 
attainable  aristocracies  have  taken  place  because  of 
their  tendency,  in  spite  of  the  selfish  interests  that 
make  in  the  opposite  direction,  to  relax  the  rigours 
of  their  discipline  and  indulge  their  personal  and 
more  selfish  inclinations.  The  results  of  such  self- 
indulgence  seem  to  me  so  much  worse,  so  much  more 
unjust,  in  an  aristocracy  than  in  a  democracy  that 
I  must,  though  I  had  no  counter-theory  of  my  own, 
side  with  the  latter.  I  must  defend  myself,  then,  by 
examining  the  grounds  of  this  partisanship.  Let  me 
go  hastily  over  the  preliminary  commonplaces. 

"We  commonly  speak,  I  know,  of  a  man's  doing 
himself  an  injustice.  Yet  I  think  we  attach  a  very 
different  moral  value  to  such  an  act  from  that  of  an 
injustice  to  some  one  else.  It  is  this  difference  which 
moves  me  in  the  comparison  we  are  now  concerned 
with.  That  privilege  should  go  with  responsibility 
as  reward  of  work  is  just  enough.  That  privilege 
should  mount  at  the  expense  of  work,  as  in  the 
aristocracy  from  which  we  have  broken,  is  natural 
enough.  Its  consequences  would  be  even  tolerable 
if  the  ones  who  attained  the  privilege  paid  the  cost. 
In  an  aristocracy,  however,  with  every  decline  in  the 
sense  of  responsibility  the  common  people  are  the 
ones  who  pay  with  suffering,  and  with  every  increase 


A  Modern  Paradox  125 

in  self-indulgence  the  common  people  are  the  ones 
who  pay  with  contributions  and  exactions.  That  is 
why,  on  the  whole,  a  democracy  is  fairer  and  juster 
than  an  aristocracy.  For  though  a  democracy  is  not 
free  from  the  same  human  weaknesses  it  has  to 
suffer  the  penalties  itself.  Though  in  both  cases  it 
is,  I  know,  simply  individuals  who  suffer,  I  have 
not  made  a  distinction  quite  without  a  difference. 
For  in  a  democracy  those  who  suffer  have  power  of 
redress.  Whether  they  use  their  power  is  not  the 
point.  Democracy  gives  it  to  them,  and  aristocracy 
withholds  it. 

"There  is  another  injustice  in  an  aristocracy  even 
more  serious  than  the  first;  and  this  brings  me  to 
the  main  premise  of  my  argument.  By  the  theory 
of  its  organization  it  distributes  privilege  and  re 
sponsibility  by  the  accident  of  birth,  and  in  the 
same  process  passes  over  all  those  who  by  the  same 
accident  are  born  among  the  mass  of  the  people. 
That  kind  tends  to  reproduce  kind  is  a  principle 
that  one  is,  I  think,  at  liberty  to  doubt  in  the  deli 
cate  matters  of  mental  and  moral  aptitude.  Great 
men  have  not  normally  had  great  sons.  Even  our 
aristocrat  has  said  that  England's  great  men  have 
emerged  from  the  classes  below  the  top;  and  if  this 
is  true  of  greatness  I  think  we  may  suppose  it  equally 
true  of  lesser  degrees  of  human  value.  A  system, 
then,  that  in  any  way  tends  to  limit  or  curtail  or 
suppress  the  very  thing  for  which  human  organ 
ization  may  be  supposed  to  exist  —  the  cultivation 
of  all  attainable  human  values  —  seems  to  me  to  be 
mocking  itself  with  contradiction.  An  aristocracy 
does,  by  its  own  theory,  exert  such  limitation. 


126  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"Even  the  large  social  loss  of  this  suppressive 
action  might  be  borne  with  nothing  more  bitter  than 
regret  if  it  did  not  involve  something  far  more  in 
tolerable.  I  mean  injustice.  I  am  grateful  to  our 
humanitarian  for  that  passage  in  which  he  spoke' of 
the  individual  as  the  largest  conscious  entity  of 
which  we  are  aware,  and  the  largest  unit  which  could 
rejoice  or  suffer  or  have  aspirations.  For  when  we 
look  at  society  minutely  we  find  that  the  moving 
thing,  the  thing  that  touches  our  hearts  most  nearly, 
is  the  individual  man.  And  though  we  may  give 
names  to  classes  of  people,  and  talk  of  them  coldly, 
we  have,  when  we  come  to  the  individual,  come  to 
the  final  goal  where  justice  or  injustice  has  its  reality 
and  stirs  our  eager  approval  or  our  burning  resent 
ment.  And  the  mass  of  the  people  is  made  up  of 
these  appealing  individuals  no  less  than  the  ruling 
class. 

"When  therefore  we  look  at  the  people  as  indi 
viduals,  possessed  of  dreams  and  desires  and  long 
ings  and  hopes  for  all  those  things  which  men  have 
thought  worth  striving  for  —  honours,  distinctions, 
knowledge,  wisdom  —  the  injustice  of  thwarting  in 
all  but  a  few  these  noble  aims  that  are  common  to 
all  men  seems  repugnant  to  every  democratic  soul. 
One  irreducible  individual  would  seem  to  have  as 
strong  claim  upon  opportunity  in  his  brief  life  as 
another.  Accident  has  brought  him  here  or  there. 
He  has  but  one  chance  at  life.  And  to  thwart  that 
chance  arbitrarily,  on  no  basis  intrinsic  to  the  oc 
casion,  is  to  commit  a  bitter  and  irreparable  in 
justice. 

"It  is  the  stirring  sense  of  this  injustice  that  has 


A  Modern  Paradox  127 

roused  men  from  time  to  time  in  all  ages  to  fight  for 
democracy  against  aristocracy.  It  was  the  sense  of 
this  equality  of  right  to  opportunity  that  produced 
our  own  Declaration  of  Independence,  smiled  at  so 
superiorly  to-day,  and  which  led  our  fathers  to 
rebel  against  a  tyranny  that  seemed  to  deny  it. 
This,  then,  was  the  democratic  idea,  the  impulse 
that  has  ever  stirred  generous  spirits  to  rebel  against 
the  arbitrary  repression  of  the  people  —  to  spread 
to  everyone  the  opportunities  that  in  an  aristocracy 
are  the  privilege  of  the  jew. 

"This  was  the  essential  aim  of  our  democratic 
revolution;  but  it  was  based  on  an  idea  still  more 
fundamental.  It  was  belief  that  the  people  wanted 
these  opportunities  and  were  worthy  of  them  that 
supported  the  heroic  protest  which  lay  at  the  found 
ing  of  the  democracy.  For  given  a  people  known 
not  to  care  for  those  nobler  ends  which  universal 
opportunity  opens  to  them,  or  known  to  be  too 
deeply  sunk  in  their  own  sensuous  wants  to  be 
worthy  of  generous  self-sacrifice,  and  who  would 
turn  a  finger  to  secure  democracy  for  them?  The 
democratic  faith  is  not  that  a  base  people  should  in 
justice  have  what  they  want,  but  rather  that  our 
particular  people  are  a  people  of  noble  aspirations 
and  should  not  be  thwarted  of  their  liberty  to  de 
velop  the  nobility  that  is  in  them.  Democracy  is  at 
bottom  a  faith  in  the  nobility  of  the  people.  Not 
that  by  the  wildest  dream  all  the  people  of  a  democ 
racy  could  be  expected  to  desire  those  nobler  ends, 
but  that  the  essential  democratic  action  is  to  give 
everyone  a  chance  —  and  a  chance  at  those  things 
that  only  the  few  had  before.  Not  that  all  will 


128  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

want  them,  but  that  the  whole  mass  is  leavened  by 
those  who  do. 

"I  pause  at  this  point,  for  here  I  have  diverged 
from  the  conclusions  drawn  by  that  modern  humani 
tarian  sympathy  that  has  such  an  appeal  for  us  all. 
I  have  diverged,  because  my  own  sympathies  are  not 
so  unqualified.  They  are  for  the  individual,  it  is 
true,  but  not  for  the  individual  in  all  his  wants, 
high  or  low.  They  are  for  the  individual  in  his 
aristocratic  deprivations.  As  democratic  sympathies 
they  must  be  for  the  individual  deprived  of  par 
ticular  things.  There  could  be  no  democratic  point 
in  a  sympathy  for  wants  that  were  already  fulfilled. 
Democracy  must  feel  for  wants  that  were  denied. 
I  can  conceive  a  sympathy  for  the  man  in  all  his 
wants  and  needs  and  aspirations,  but  I  cannot  be 
lieve  that  that  is  democracy.  I  know  that  such  is 
the  current  and  popular  definition  —  that  democ 
racy  is  the  government  that  expresses  the  will  of 
the  whole  people,  no  matter  what  that  will.  But 
such  a  definition  can  hardly  be  wholly  true.  Some 
thing  in  our  right  definition  must  reside  in  the 
nature  of  the  will.  For  if,  for  example,  —  I  take 
not  impossible  suppositions  —  the  will  of  the  people 
should  be  to  establish  an  aristocracy  or  to  enthrone 
a  ruler,  we  could  hardly  call  the  will  or  the  act 
which  carried  it  out  democratic.  The  will  of  the 
people  must  be  of  a  particular  kind.  Something  in 
our  definition  of  democracy  inheres  in  the  nature  of 
the  ideas  upon  which  the  people  act. 

"The  essential  nature  of  those  ideas,  then,  the 
nature  which  makes  them  democratic,  I  can  conceive 
to  be  only  this  —  that  a  noble  people  aspire  to  noble 


A  Modern  Paradox  129 

things  of  which  they  have  been  deprived;  that  this 
deprivation  is  unjust;  and  that  the  distinctive  demo 
cratic  action  is  the  opening  up  to  their  attainment, 
not  of  the  things  which  they  had  before  —  there 
would  be  no  point  to  that  —  but  of  those  things 
which  an  aristocracy  had  closed  to  them.  Such,  as 
I  conceive  it,  is  the  essence  of  the  democratic  faith. 

"With  this  animating  idea  in  mind,  then,  I  should 
like  to  make  some  applications  and  defences  which 
I  believe  are  not  impertinent,  before  I  go  on  to  what 
I  may  call  the  practical  necessities  of  democracy. 
Our  humanitarian  has  spoken  of  the  schools  as  the 
principal  agent  in  the  dynamic  expression  of  democ 
racy.  I  suppose  it  is  the  schools  that  give  the  most 
effective  expression  to  whatever  political  philosophy 
holds  among  a  people.  I  can  see  no  other  point  for 
governmental  schools.  And  but  now,  as  our  friend 
traced  the  aristocratic  influence  of  the  vocational 
schools,  the  sense  of  their  power  intensified  my  own 
conviction  as  to  the  kind  of  discipline  the  democracy 
would  needs  establish  if  it  wished  to  remain  a 
democracy. 

"In  the  aristocratic  regime,  with  the  masses  of 
the  people  held  to  their  places  in  the  grand  hier 
archy,  the  severest  deprivation  and  the  bitterest  in 
justice  lie  in  the  restricted  range  of  their  education. 
Specialized  by  a  ruling  class  to  insure  in  them  the 
greatest  amount  of  efficiency  and  to  get  out  of  them 
the  greatest  amount  of  work,  they  are  limited  in  the 
range  of  their  finer  human  possibilities  by  the  nar 
rowed  bounds  in  which  their  growing  minds  are 
exercised.  No  aristocracy,  to  be  sure,  ever  quite 
wholly  enforced  such  restrictions,  but  the  tendency 


130  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

was  in  that  direction,  and  to  the  degree  to  which  it 
succeeded  was  due  the  generous  force  of  the  demo 
cratic  protest  and  reaction.  In  the  pursuit  of  its 
own  ideal,  then,  the  democracy  established  schools 
to  spread  to  all,  to  the  degree  to  which  they  wished 
to  take  advantage  of  it,  the  opportunity  to  gain  this 
larger  and  more  comprehensive  vision  which  was 
before  the  opportunity  of  the  few.  It  opened  up  to 
them  the  wider  ranges  of  thought,  and  gave  them 
the  chance  to  be  more  than  the  half-men  they  had 
been.  Democracy  for  its  own  part  has  never  suc 
ceeded  wholly,  but  its  attempt  has  been  in  this  di 
rection;  and  the  degree  to  which  it  has  succeeded 
has  been  the  degree  to  which  it  has  justified  its 
ideal  as  against  the  aristocratic  ideal. 

"It  opened  up  to  them  history,  and  the  facts  and 
significance  of  human  experience.  It  opened  up  to 
them  literature,  and  the  facts  and  significance  of  the 
dynamic  traits  of  human  nature.  It  opened  up  to 
them  language,  and  gave  them  access  to  the  thoughts 
of  other  peoples.  If  these  revelations  had  no  practi 
cal  bearing  on  the  problems  of  making  a  livelihood, 
it  was  not  the  making  of  a  livelihood  that  the  people 
had  been  denied  by  an  aristocracy.  These  revela 
tions  gave  them  something  really  democratic.  They 
had  the  value  of  disinterestedness;  they  disciplined 
the  democratic  mind  in  a  type  of  thought  unbiased 
by  the  consideration  of  profit  or  of  momentary  ad 
vantage.  They  constituted  a  culture  that  lay  at  the 
base  of  the  broadest  and  noblest  development  of  the 
human  spirit.  They  gave  to  the  many  the  specific 
thing  of  which  they  had  been  aristocratically  de 
prived.  They  did  the  particular  thing  which  it  had 


A  Modern  Paradox  131 

been  worth  while  to  fight  for,  perhaps  to  die  for,  in 
the  revolution  which  had  made  the  democracy 
possible. 

"In  the  older  regime  the  people  worked:  they 
cooked,  they  sewed,  they  farmed,  they  sold  goods 
over  the  counter,  they  kept  books,  they  built  houses, 
each  man  to  his  last.  But  the  large  expansion  of 
their  minds  among  the  data  of  all  humanity,  and  in 
the  nobler  ranges  of  disinterested  thought,  was  no 
where  provided  for.  For  the  democracy  to  give 
them  vocational  training,  then,  to  train  them  to  the 
narrow  range  of  data  and  relations  that  inhere  in  a 
single  trade  or  industry,  with  the  aim  of  fitting  them 
to  make  a  living  in  that  industry  —  for  it,  in  other 
words,  to  give  the  people  what  they  already  had, 
only  to  intensify  the  narrow  bounds  of  their  in 
terests  by  early  specialization,  and  then  by  calling 
that  training  'democratic'  to  soothe  those  simple 
minds  untaught  to  detect  the  fallacies  in  ideas  be 
yond  the  range  of  their  special  training,  seems  to  me 
to  be  deeply  false  and  deeply  wrong. 

"All  this,  done  in  sympathy  with  the  wants  and 
needs  and  aspirations  of  the  people,  may  be  a  wiser, 
and  juster,  and  finer  thing  than  democracy.  But 
such  a  sympathy  is  not  democracy;  it  is  sympathy. 
It  is  universal;  it  faces  in  every  direction;  it  has  no 
distinctive  aim.  As  for  democracy,  I  have  tried  to 
say  what  its  aim  is.  It,  too,  is  animated  by  sym 
pathy  with  individual  men,  but  it  sympathizes  with 
a  particular  variety  of  their  needs  —  with  the 
harshest  of  their  deprivations.  It  tries  to  give  them 
their  human  right  to  develop  to  the  utmost  their 
human  possibilities. 


132  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"Yet  perhaps  I  have  been  too  hasty  in  my 
criticism.  Perhaps,  just  as  democracy  is  moved  by 
a  desire  to  spread  the  opportunity  for  spiritual  de 
velopment,  humanitarianism  is  moved  to  spread 
material  comfort.  The  plea  for  vocational  training 
is  open  to  such  interpretation.  It  may  in  the  end 
prove  true  that  their  wants  and  needs  and  aspira 
tions  are  material ;  that  the  people  are  not  fit  for  the 
training  of  their  spirits.  Such  a  belief  may  be  well 
founded;  but  it  is  not  a  democratic  belief. 

"Have  I,  in  all  that  I  have  said,  been  reading  into 
democracy  too  spiritual  an  ideal?  Have  I  been 
ignoring  the  historic  Stamp  Act  and  the  commercial 
impulses  of  our  own  Revolution?  Have  I,  shielded 
from  the  bitter  pressure  of  common  needs,  been 
speaking  like  a  closet  philosopher,  imputing  to  the 
many,  wants  which  they  do  not  feel,  and  aspirations 
of  which  they  have  never  dreamt?  If  I  have  I  can 
see  no  point  in  democracy.  For  certainly  democracy 
is  not  the  agent  best  suited  to  material  ends.  A 
people  fitted  by  exclusive  training  for  particular 
tasks  will  become  more  efficient  in  industry  and 
commerce.  Efficiency  is  increased  by  division  of 
labour  and  the  specialization  of  the  parts.  Aris 
tocracy,  then,  is  the  regime  for  that  end,  for  aris 
tocracy  is  more  efficient  than  democracy.  And  no 
doubt  the  parts  are  even  more  physically  com 
fortable,  perhaps  even  happier,  each  fitted  to  its 
niche  and  rewarded  according  to  its  fitness.  If  our 
sympathies  for  the  physical  welfare  of  the  parts 
predominate,  then  this  specialization  is  the  course 
our  action  will  take.  We  will  make  our  schools  vo 
cational.  We  will  train  our  masses  to  special  trades. 


A  Modern  Paradox  133 

We  will  discipline  them  in  material  efficiency.  But 
we  shall  not  be  acting  on  the  democratic  principle. 
We  shall,  as  was  said,  be  drifting  toward  aristocracy. 

"If  a  man  were  only  an  animal,  then  his  physical 
ease  would  be  enough.  But  he  is  a  man.  And  it 
seems  to  me  that  democracy  has  no  point  save  as 
it  does  something  that  an  aristocracy  cannot  do  for 
the  distinctively  humane  part  of  him  —  for  his  spirit. 
I  think  it  is  not  to  be  questioned  that  a  youth  trained 
in  the  schools  to  be  a  farmer  will  be  a  more  efficient 
farmer  than  one  who  has  spent  the  time  of  that  train 
ing  in  history  and  Latin  and  mathematics.  Yet  some 
price  must  be  paid  for  spiritual  development.  And  I 
can  see  no  distinctive  idea  in  democracy  unless  it  is 
that  to  give  to  everyone  some  degree  of  spiritual  de 
velopment  is  worth  the  price  of  lesser  material  effi 
ciency,  even  a  lesser  physical  comfort.  Such,  I 
believe,  is  the  animating  idea  of  democratic  edu 
cation.  I  can  conceive  no  other. 

"I  have  come  midway  in  my  defence.  I  have  de 
scribed  what  seems  to  me  the  ideal  that  animates 
and  justifies  the  constant  democratic  reaction  against 
the  aristocratic  tendency,  and  determines  the  dis 
tinctive  purpose  of  the  democratic  government. 
And  I  have  applied  this  principle  to  the  schools  es 
tablished  to  accomplish  and  to  perpetuate  the  demo 
cratic  ideal.  My  position  may  have  seemed  ar 
bitrary.  One  of  you  on  behalf  of  humanitarianism 
has  said  that  the  people  do  not  want  the  broad  de 
velopment  of  their  spirits,  and  the  other  on  behalf 
of  aristocracy  has  said  that  they  do  not  want  it. 
Both  have  affirmed  that  they  want  what  the  aris 
tocracy  has  always  condemned  them  to,  —  jobs  and 


134  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

the  lower  offices  of  life.  As  a  democrat,  however, 
I  have  no  ground  to  take  but  a  belief  that  the  hu 
manitarian  and  the  aristocrat  are  wrong.  I  disagree 
with  you,  arbitrarily  perhaps,  but  the  point  is  one 
upon  which  whatever  position  one  takes,  whatever 
way  one  faces,  he  does  so  arbitrarily.  He  takes  his 
ground  on  the  basis  of  a  spontaneous  judgment. 
Democracy  is  a  faith.  I  may  have  reasons  which  to 
me  seem  sufficient;  but  in  the  last  analysis  I  know 
that  I  have  taken  my  ground,  as  you  have  taken 
yours,  by  virtue  of  a  faith  that  is  in  me. 

"If  I  may  be  allowed  this  faith,  then,  what  I  go 
on  to  say  will,  I  think,  seem  reasonable.  I  have 
come  to  the  consideration  of  democracy  as  a  practi 
cal  thing.  An  ideal  is  futile  without  practical  action. 
Democracy  is  not  only  an  ideal;  it  is  a  government. 
This  may  be  a  commonplace,  but  its  truth  was  no 
where  recognized  in  the  exposition  of  the  humani 
tarian  regime.  Aristocracy  and  democracy  both 
provide  in  those  who  rule  a  discipline  which  trains 
their  minds  in  the  broader  relations  of  men.  Indus 
trial  humanitarianism  fails  to  provide  for  the  ad 
ministrative  wisdom  of  its  rulers.  The  affairs  of  a 
democracy  must  be  carried  on,  and  they  must  be 
carried  on  by  somebody.  Somebody  must  have  the 
necessary  wisdom.  And  wisdom  lies  only  in  men's 
minds.  Since  in  a  democracy,  therefore,  its  ma 
jorities  are  responsible,  it  must  discipline  these 
majorities  in  the  kind  of  wisdom  which  makes  for 
administrative  effectiveness,  and  effectiveness  in  the 
democratic  direction. 

"The  relationship  between  the  discipline  of  these 
majorities  and  the  democratic  government  is  too 


A  Modern  Paradox  135 

obvious  to  need  more  than  passing  illustration. 
Upon  the  quality  of  the  discipline  which  gives  them 
their  judgment  and  taste  will  depend  the  quality  of 
the  men  whom  they  elect  to  office,  the  quality  of  the 
laws  which  they  enforce,  the  quality  of  justice,  the 
nature  of  the  public  policy,  the  kind  of  literature 
encouraged  by  their  reading,  the  type  of  life  en 
couraged  by  their  example,  the  quality  of  the  theater, 
the  quality  of  the  arts,  the  quality  of  scholarship 
endowed  and  encouraged,  the  beauty  of  the  cities, 
the  grace  of  social  life.  Above  all,  upon  the  kind  of 
discipline  by  which  their  judgment  and  taste  have 
been  determined  will  depend  the  very  discipline  it 
self  by  which  that  judgment  and  taste  are  to  be 
perpetuated  in  their  children. 

"That  is  why  the  schools  are  a  governmental  in 
stitution.  In  so  far  as  they  have  any  point  in  the 
practical  workings  of  a  democracy  they  have  it  by 
virtue  of  their  service  in  disciplining  the  majorities 
of  a  democracy  in  the  kind  of  wisdom  needed  to 
guide  them  in  the  democratic  path.  In  this  matter 
something  may  be  learned  from  aristocracy.  The 
aristocracy  disciplines  its  governing  class  in  the 
broader  field.  And  though  the  problem  of  democ 
racy  has  its  striking  differences  from  the  problem 
of  aristocracy,  they  are  differences  so  far  from  re 
lieving  it  of  the  necessity  of  jealously  disciplining 
its  citizens  to  a  large  and  generous  wisdom,  that  they 
cry  loudly  for  a  yet  more  rigorous  discipline  in  that 
wisdom.  One  of  you  has  mentioned  the  aristocratic 
disbelief  in  our  ability  to  maintain  this  discipline. 
Democracy  is,  we  may  agree  with  him,  immeasur 
ably  harder  to  maintain  than  an  aristocracy.  It  has 


136  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

a  people  trained  to  wider  interests  than  the  lower 
classes  of  an  aristocracy,  a  people  less  compactly 
organized,  more  restless,  more  shifting.  And  to 
govern  them  it  has  no  class  set  apart,  trained  to  rule, 
stimulated  by  selfish  incentives,  rewarded  by  honor 
and  privilege.  As  a  problem,  then,  it  requires  a 
higher  intelligence  to  solve,  and  those  who  disbelieve 
in  it  do  so  on  the  ground  of  a  disbelief  in  the  power 
of  a  whole  people  to  make  the  necessary  self-sacrifice 
and  train  themselves,  at  the  expense  of  their  private 
interests,  in  the  type  of  learning  necessary  to  the 
wise  direction  of  affairs. 

"But  a  belief  in  democracy  is  incompatible  with 
this  doubt.  Democracy  believes  in  the  moving 
power  of  its  ideal,  and  in  the  existence  of  a  dynamic 
generosity  in  its  people,  or  it  is  not  democracy.  It 
believes  that  these  are  sufficient  to  take  the  place  of 
rewards  and  privilege  and  honor.  A  democracy 
must  believe  these  things,  for  these  beliefs  are 
democracy. 

"The  second  difference,  already  implied,  is  that, 
though  the  whole  people  are  responsible  for  its  wel 
fare —  its  policies,  its  justice,  its  civilizing  activ 
ities  —  they  cannot  be  disciplined  exclusively  to 
meet  these  responsibilities.  Each  man  has  his 
private  interests  and  duties  calling  him  strongly,  and 
he  must  bring  up  his  children  to  similar  conflicting 
duties.  This  conflict  creates  the  fundamental  prob 
lem  of  practical  democracy,  just  as  it  creates,  with 
specific  variations,  the  fundamental  problem  of  all 
government. 

"The  gist  of  the  matter  is  then  that  these  two 
types  of  interest  clash,  and  that  in  a  democracy, 


A  Modern  Paradox  137 

with  no  governing  class,  everyone  must  make  a 
sacrifice  of  private  to  public  service.  This  sacrifice 
is  the  price  of  its  democratic  liberties.  Moreover 
the  respective  disciplines  for  these  ends  conflict. 
Training  for  private  interests  has  been  explained  to 
us.  It  is  concentrated  upon  a  narrow  field,  with  the 
end  in  view  of  material  returns.  For  the  public 
interest  the  discipline  must  necessarily  be  broad  and 
fundamental,  with  the  end  in  view  of  habituating 
the  mind  to  a  disinterested  perception  of  things  as 
they  are  —  of  training  the  mind  to  think  with  clear 
judgments  upon  those  data  and  those  relations  which 
hold,  not  in  a  single  field  but  in  all  fields  —  not  in  a 
single  task  but  in  the  comprehensive  task  of  the 
whole  nation. 

"The  need  of  this  latter  kind  of  discipline  is 
sufficiently  obvious.  And  I  can  find  no  logic  that 
will  let  me  conclude  that  training  in  the  data  and 
relations  of  a  single  trade  will  make  for  as  broad 
and  deep  a  wisdom  as  discipline  in  matters  that  lie 
at  the  base  of  all  relations  of  a  people  —  human 
nature,  human  thought,  and  human  experience,  as 
revealed  in  literature  and  history.  Where  else  is 
the  citizen  to  gain  a  large  political  wisdom?  It  was 
in  this  broad  discipline  that  aristocracy  trained  its 
rulers.  It  trained  them  to  no  especial  tasks,  but  by 
traditions  founded  upon  a  sense  of  the  ends  to  be 
attained,  gave  them  an  education  which  informed 
them  of  the  best  that  had  been  thought  and  done  in 
the  past  by  men  in  all  countries  and  in  all  ages.  It 
trained  them  to  minute  and  careful  thinking  in  this 
broad  field.  It  did  not  teach  them  to  farm  their 
estates,  or  to  make  shoes  or  bridges,  or  to  cook,  but 
rather  to  control  the  large  activities  of  the  nation. 


138  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"It  may  have  failed.  It  is  the  democratic  belief 
that  it  did  fail.  But  if  it  failed,  it  failed  not  because 
it  learned  its  large  lesson  too  well  but  because  it 
grew  self-indulgent,  and  having  power,  abused  its 
privileges  and  neglected  its  responsibilities.  It  failed 
because  it  did  not  learn  its  large  lesson  well  enough. 
Somehow  the  democracy  must  learn  those  lessons 
which  the  aristocracy  neglected.  Somehow  it  must 
discipline  its  responsible  majorities  in  that  broad 
grasp  of  human  relations  which  makes  for  admin 
istrative  wisdom.  That  is  the  practical  democratic 
problem  of  education. 

"Democracy  has  no  other  practical  object  to  serve 
in  its  schools  than  to  solve  this  problem.  If  the 
people  cannot  specialize,  after  the  manner  of  a 
ruling  class,  and  can  as  a  whole  get  but  a  part  of 
that  discipline  at  best,  that  would  not  seem  a  reason 
why  that  part  should  be  done  away  with;  rather  a 
reason  why  it  should  be  cherished  and  intensified  to 
the  utmost.  Knowledge  and  wisdom  .are  not  the 
kind  of  thing  that  once  attained  can  be  handed  down 
from  generation  to  generation  like  heirlooms.  They 
exist  nowhere  but  in  individual  human  minds,  and 
to  be  maintained  have  to  be  re-created  there  from  the 
ground  up  in  every  generation.  As  a  consequence 
there  can  be  no  slackening  of  the  educative  process. 
Nowhere  more  than  here  is  eternal  vigilance  the 
price  of  liberty.  The  practical  needs  of  the  democ 
racy,  then,  coincide  with  the  ideal  needs,  for  the 
broader  wisdom  of  which  the  people  were  deprived 
is  the  same  wisdom  that  is  needed  for  the  govern 
ment  for  which  they  are  now  responsible. 

"Even  more  strikingly  true  is  the  converse  of  this 


A  Modern  Paradox  139 

conclusion.  In  a  democracy,  where  the  citizens 
have  private  interests  distinct  from  the  public  in 
terest,  the  chief  public  danger  lies  in  the  over-devel 
opment  of  private  interests.  Therein  is  the  chief 
enemy  of  democracy.  I  need  not  point  out  in  con 
firmation  our  trusts,  our  corporations,  our  municipal 
conditions,  our  lobbies.  For  the  democracy,  there 
fore,  to  suffer  the  lessening  of  that  discipline  of  its 
citizens  which  is  so  necessary  for  its  wise  adminis 
tration,  is  to  break  down  its  chief  safeguard.  For 
it  further  to  accede  to  their  selfish  demands  and 
substitute  a  training  which  makes  in  each  man  for 
an  intensification  of  his  own  private  interests,  is  a 
governmental  action  making  directly  and  blindly 
for  its  own  undoing.  At  one  stroke  it  is  removing 
the  safeguard  and  strengthening  the  enemy. 

"Democracy  has  no  enemy  to  fear  but  itself. 
Government  by  the  few  has  the  eternal  menace  of 
the  suppressed  many.  But  government  by  the 
people  need  fear  nothing  but  its  own  will.  It  may 
do  what  it  pleases.  It  may  insensibly  change  its 
desires;  it  may  follow  an  altered  will  to  the  forma 
tion  of  a  new  regime.  But  if  it  desires  to  remain  a 
democracy  it  must  safeguard  that  desire.  It  must 
fortify  itself  against  those  selfish  interests  which 
everyone  must  possess,  and  which  by  democratic 
theory  everyone  should  possess.  It  must  by  a 
liberal  and  disinterested  discipline  impart  a  generous 
conception  of  the  spiritual  idea  of  democracy,  and 
impart  the  wisdom  that  is  necessary  to  the  wise  ad 
ministration  of  its  affairs.  The  theory  of  democratic 
education,  then,  is  that  it  should  bring  up  its  youths 
in  that  generous  conception,  strengthen  their  gen- 


140  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

erous  desire  for  its  service,  and  train  them  in  an 
ability  to  grasp  and  administer  its  affairs  in  harmony 
with  that  generous  conception.  For  it,  therefore,  by 
direct  and  conscious  action  to  weaken  the  discipline 
of  that  part  of  the  man  which  serves  the  democracy, 
and  by  the  same  stroke  to  strengthen  that  part  of 
him  which  conflicts  with  the  democracy,  is  to  make 
by  far  and  deep  reaching  influences  for  its  own 
destruction. 

"I  have  said  that  self-indulgence,  the  use  of  pub 
lic  power  to  private  ends,  and  the  decline  of  the 
sense  of  public  responsibility,  have  marked  the 
downfall  of  aristocracies.  Until  a  moment  ago,  how 
ever,  I  had  felt  a  blind  security  for  the  democracy 
thinking  that  though  the  whole  people  might  grow 
self-indulgent  there  lurked  no  enemy  near  to  rise 
up  in  revolt  against  the  evils  of  its  .decadence.  I 
had  not  seen  that  though  the  democracy  need  fear 
no  revolution  it  declines  no  less  surely  when  the 
generous  spirit  of  its  own  natal  impulse  dies.  If  in 
the  end  that  spirit  does  die,  it  sickens  first,  like  the 
spirit  of  aristocracy,  at  the  entrance  of  self-indul 
gence.  In  the  democracy  about  us  there  is  evidence 
that  the  moment  of  sickness  has  come.  There  is  the 
use  of  public  power  to  private  ends,  the  decline  in 
the  sense  of  public  responsibility.  Even  the  little 
time  asked  for  discipline  to  public  service  is  be 
grudged,  and  that  time  is  turned  over  to  private 
ends.  Instead  of  self-devotion  to  public  service,  on 
the  part  of  the  many,  the  many  are  bending  the 
public  service  to  self-devotion. 

"Still,  though  I  am  not  blind  to  the  discourage 
ments  of  the  moment,  I  have  not  lost  my  democratic 


A  Modern  Paradox  141 

faith.  I  believe  that,  given  a  people  of  intelligence 
such  as  ours,  it  is  possible  to  make  a  democracy 
nobler  and  juster  than  the  aristocracy  from  which 
we  have  sprung,  and  toward  which,  as  has  been 
shown  us,  we  are,  alas,  beginning  to  turn  again.  I 
do  not  think  that  it  is  too  late  to  face  about  and 
pursue  once  more  our  own  proper  course.  But 
whether  we  want  to  face  about,  now  that  we  have 
tasted  the  poisonous  sweets  of  self-indulgence,  I  do 
not  know.  One  of  you  says  that  we  do  not;  the 
other  says  that  we  do  not. 

"I  believe  that  the  one  essential  thing  in  the 
maintenance  of  the  democracy  is  the  broad  disci 
pline  of  its  youths.  And  when  I  look  at  that  dis 
cipline  I  see  it  gradually  narrowing.  I  believe  that 
the  one  enemy  of  democracy  is  the  private  interests 
of  its  people.  And  when  I  look  about  me  I  see  that 
instead  of  strengthening  its  discipline  to  counteract 
the  force  of  these  interests  the  democracy  is  bending 
its  discipline  to  their  enhancement.  When  I  search 
in  obscure  corners,  hoping  to  find  remnants  of  the 
disinterested  pursuit  of  wisdom  so  necessary  to 
democracy,  I  see  it  wholly  dependent  upon  private 
generosity,  retreating  to  private  foundations.  With 
the  masses  of  the  people  narrowed  in  their  educa 
tion  to  particular  tasks,  and  bent  in  the  habits  of 
their  minds  to  an  exclusive  regard  for  their  private 
interests;  and  with  the  few  who  are  not  so  special 
ized  disciplined  —  like  an  aristocratic  class,  by 
private  endowment  —  in  the  broader  learning  that 
is  needed  for  a  grasp  of  the  complex  relationships 
of  the  whole,  I  can  see  only  a  slow  trend  toward 
aristocracy. 


142  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"Still  I  have  not  despaired.  I  believe  that  the 
democratic  spirit  may  survive  the  stimulus  of  those 
oppressions  from  which  it  revolts,  and  may  recover 
even  from  its  present  sickness.  But  I  believe  that  it 
can  survive  only  by  the  broad,  disinterested  dis 
cipline  of  its  youths  —  a  discipline  which  will  take 
them  when  they  are  young  and  generous,  give  them 
the  deep  foundations  of  that  nobler  development  of 
which  in  such  moving  numbers  they  were  once  de 
prived,  habituate  their  minds  to  the  disinterested 
outlook  from  which  clear  thinking  and  generous 
action  spring,  form  them  in  the  liberal  wisdom  of 
the  ages,  and  teach  them  the  wide  relations  between 
men,  which  lie  at  the  base  of  a  wise  and  moderate 
administration  of  the  interests  of  their  people." 

He  ceased,  and  they  sat  again  in  silence,  smoking 
and  gazing  at  the  fire.  Two  of  the  four  of  them,  at 
least,  were  saddened  by  the  thoughts  of  the 
evening  —  by  the  dangers  which  threatened  the 
generous  interests  which  they  had  so  nearly  at  heart, 
and  by  the  subtle  and  complex  relationships  which 
their  oppositions  and  their  no  less  disconcerting 
agreements  had  revealed.  It  was,  therefore,  with 
chastened  spirits  though  with  genuine  warmth  of 
friendship  that  they  uttered  the  commonplaces  of 
good-night. 


I.      CUDGELS  AND  COMMON   SENSE 

IT  was  a  revealing  touch  to  our  friend's  quality 
that  as  he  grew  older  it  was  his  tolerance  and 
not  his  crabbedness  that  should  have  increased.  He 
grew  more  sociable,  more  dependent  on  the  world, 
by  virtue  of  the  humanity  that  had  always  lain  be 
hind  his  militant  front.  The  militant  in  him  had 
leave  to  cool  with  the  passing  of  years.  It  was 
still  in  reserve,  indeed,  as  events  showed,  but  it  no 
longer  went  about  with  its  sword  drawn.  He  took 
more  time  now  to  go  about,  and  more  people  dropped 
in  on  him  for  talk.  In  the  circle  about  him  it  was 
said  that  he  improved.  He  did;  but  he  spoiled  the 
effect  of  this  comment  for  one  informant  by  laugh 
ing  that  it  came,  after  the  manner  of  the  world,  only 
when  he  had  stopped  improving.  Obviously  he 
was  still  the  ironic  observer. 

And  he  was  observed.  Acquaintances  saw  him 
one  winter  haunting  the  galleries  and  picture  shops, 
an  attractive  figure,  grown  a  little  thicker  with 
middle  age,  amenity  in  the  slight  stoop  of  the  neck, 
and  vigor  in  the  erect  shoulders.  His  face  was 
brooding  rather  than  animated,  and  only  when  the 
eyes  were  looking  into  yours  did  you  catch  the 
something  lucidly  human  in  him  that  was  at  once 
both  boy  and  man.  The  eyes  lingered,  upon  you 


144  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

at  the  time,  and  afterward,  when  he  had  gone  by, 
in  your  memory.  It  was  said  that  women  hated 
him  for  the  truths  he  told,  and  still  clung  to  him  as 
a  staunch  friend. 

His  going  about  this  winter  among  the  show 
windows  of  Bohemia  was  a  genuine  quest.  He  was 
interested  in  beautiful  things  for  their  own  sakes, 
as  the  phrase  is,  and  that  would  have  been  enough. 
But  it  was  characteristic  of  him  that  he  should  in  a 
measure  complicate  whatever  point  of  interest  ab 
sorbed  him;  and  his  interest  in  art  was  thus  com 
plexly  the  ramification  of  something  else.  He  was 
unable  to  take  it  simply,  because  for  him  its  re 
lation  to  that  something  else  was  its  thrilling  point. 
He  had  a  passion  for  seeing  life  whole,  for  catching 
its  proportions.  His  ancient  grievance  was  that  a 
fine  sense  of  proportion  was  the  rarest  thing  in  the 
world  —  yes,  in  both  senses. 

When  therefore  after  a  certain  autumn  exhibition 
he  had  caught  himself  sliding  into  the  seductive  sun 
set  land  of  aesthetic  speculation  and  reading,  he 
brought  himself  up  with  a  sharp  tug  at  the  reins. 
Certain  of  his  friends  promptly  rallied  him  for  what 
they  called  his  Puritanic  uncomfortableness  in  the 
presence  of  beauty.  He  acquitted  himself  of  such 
a  charge,  however,  and  with  a  good  deal  of  good 
evidence.  His  discomfort  came  from  another  source. 
He  found  his  ancient  grievance  against  the  confident 
hypocrisy  of  the  five  senses  grumbling  back  into 
consciousness,  like  an  old  rheumatic  wound.  And  if 
he  could  take  it  now  a  little  more  serenely,  as  time 
will  inure  its  victims  even  to  pain,  still  there  were 
moments  when  it  made  him  wince  and  cry  out.  And 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  145 

if  he  did  cry  out  now  and  then,  so  that  his  bare 
words,  repeated,  would  sound  harsh,  one  who  was 
present  and  who  had  a  grain  of  salt  in  him  would 
have  caught  in  the  light  of  his  eye  and  the  tone  of 
his  voice  the  saving  spark  of  humor  that  turned 
his  railing  complaint  into  but  a  negative  way  of 
picturing  his  own  vision. 

His  temper,  for  all  its  amelioration,  was  the  fight 
ing  one  still,  and  the  fighting  temper  perforce  holds 
in  a  kind  of  tolerant  contempt  the  passive  enjoy 
ments  of  peace.  That  is  the  peculiar  angle  from 
which  its  owner  looks  out  upon  the  world.  He  will 
forever  have  his  dragon  to  fight.  And  however 
much  he  values  the  palace,  it  will  be  upon  the 
dragon  at  the  gate  that  he  demonstrates  his  devotion. 
To  be  content  with  the  positive  depiction  of  his 
notion  was  what,  at  the  cost  of  peace,  our  friend 
therefore  could  not  bring  himself  to.  It  was  too 
tame  a  sport;  it  drew  to  itself  too  many  of  the 
slothful  and  the  self-indulgent. 

It  was  in  part  the  spectacle,  especially  in  the  arts, 
of  beautiful  talkers  who  lived  parasitically  by  foster 
ing  a  cult,  and  the  great  horde  who  on  their  side 
responded  to  the  flattery  of  it,  that  won  his  active 
disgust.  But  more  particularly  it  was  his  old  love 
of  seeing  life  whole,  of  seeing  it  in  measure  and 
proportion,  that  sent  him  back  characteristically  to 
the  center  for  a  perspective.  He  could  not  escape 
from  the  sense  that  life  was  a  matter  of  living  and 
that  the  center  was  the  conception  of  a  decent  life. 
It  was  there  at  all  events  that  he  took  his  perpetual 
refuge. 

The  literature  he  had  just  been  through  was  an 


146  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

amazing  mass.  It  had  no  help  for  him  at  all.  It  had 
brought  into  its  service  a  whole  gamut  of  appeal  — 
cleverness,  eloquence,  sentiment,  gossip,  and 
romance;  and  many  kinds  of  treatment  —  aesthetic, 
scientific,  historical,  archaeological,  and  metaphys 
ical.  But  aside  from  a  characteristic  beauty  of 
binding  and  print  it  was  wonderfully  barren.  He 
was  aware  of  thousands  of  honest  painters,  and 
sculptors,  and  musicians  struggling  at  their  work, 
Two  or  three  he  knew,  at  home  and  abroad,  and  one 
who  had  won  fame  in  two  continents.  But  they 
were  silent  —  talkative  enough  at  night  in  the  studio 
with  glasses  clinking  —  but  silent  and  hard-working 
over  their  brush  or  chisel  or  score.  And  they  had  a 
kind  of  tacit  hate  for  the  great  horde  of  cult 
mongers. 

"Don't  you  read  the  literature  of  your  subject?" 
he  had  asked  one  of  these  friends  one  day  as  they 
lounged  through  the  Louvre. 

The  other  looked  at  him  quizzically  for  a  moment 
before  he  replied,  and  then,  —  "Certainly  —  here," 
he  said,  and  his  hand  waved  at  the  walls  of  the  Salon 
Carre.  In  a  moment  he  added,  "Biography,  of 
course,  and  history.  You  belong  to  your  own 
metier,  and  you  want  to  know  it  from  the  bottom. 
But  the  rest — "  He  gave  a  gesture  that  together 
they  had  seen  and  loved  in  an  excursion  they  had 
taken  together  in  old  days  into  Bohemia  —  the 
geographical  Bohemia  —  a  wringing  of  the  hands 
on  wilted  wrists,  that  pointed  utter  though  whimsical 
despair.  They  laughed  the  quiet  laugh  of  old 
memories. 

At  the  moment  our  friend  had  put  the  painter's 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  147 

disgust  down  to  the  worker's  characteristic  intol 
erance  of  the  theorist.  But  now,  after  a  long  dive 
into  the  luke-warm  seas  of  this  literature,  he  wrung 
his  own  hands  in  the  Bohemian  pantomime.  It  was 
of  a  piece,  for  the  most  part,  with  a  mass  of  stuff 
about  literature  —  "Dante's  Vision,"  "Wordsworth's 
Nature,"  "Browning's  Philosophy" —  for  those  who 
wanted  to  shine  among  the  ignorant  without  the 
intolerable  trouble  and  boredom  of  reading  the 
original.  And  if  he  had  found  the  literary  pabulum 
thin  and  sickly,  tricked  up  with  sentiment  and 
mystic  emotion,  he  found  the  artistic  pabulum  yet 
worse,  with  the  greater  license  of  the  vaguer  sub 
ject.  He  had  independently  a  vigorous  sense  of 
meaning  for  the  words  spirit  and  soul  or  he  would 
have  retreated  from  this  literature  with  a  hardened 
loathing  for  both.  As  it  was,  the  words  insight  and 
message  were  forever  spoiled  for  him. 

His  criticism  of  this  literature,  apart  from  his 
personal  disgust,  was  that  it  wrought  itself  up  en 
tirely  within  the  circle  of  its  own  substance  —  that 
it  failed  to  anchor  itself  in  the  charted  waters  of  the 
general  consciousness  and  went  drifting  off  into 
the  chimerical  seas  of  its  own  romantic  dreams. 
Well,  that  was  just  what  he  hated. 

Among  his  friends  was  one  whom  he  liked  with 
unreasoning  affection,  ignoring  differences  which  in 
anyone  else  would  have  been  irritating  and  repellent. 
With  youth,  and  a  dark,  handsome  Spanish  face,  a 
serious  but  not  humorless  concern  for  the  gentler 
matters  of  life,  and  a  gift  of  expression  that  had 
tempted  him  into  poetry  with  justifying  results,  this 
friend  surprised  those  who  knew  his  type  and  per- 


148  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

ceived  his  vogue  with  a  modesty  that  sometimes 
almost  became  humility.  The  most  diverse  ac 
knowledged  his  charm.  He  was  philosophical, 
aesthetic,  epicurean,  humanitarian,  classic,  satiric, 
romantic,  stoic,  by  turns  and  in  combination,  re 
flecting  the  bent  of  his  companions  and  his  mood. 
He  had  a  quick  sympathy  that  could  be  roused  by 
any  appeal  to  his  feelings,  and  an  intensity  of  re 
sponse,  an  ardor  of  approval,  a  self-effacement  be 
fore  the  conquering  idea,  that  led  to  the  general 
agreement  that  the  crowning  quality  of  his  charm 
was  sincerity. 

Our  friend  at  first  demurred  at  this  verdict.  In 
the  end,  however,  he  agreed.  But  he  agreed  with  a 
discrimination  that  helped  him  later  to  probe  to  the 
human  roots  of  his  own  philosophical  leanings 
in  this  moot  region  of  the  feelings  and  the  senses. 
Here  was  a  type  of  sincerity  that  based  itself  on  the 
emotions,  and  expressed  itself  in  the  kindling  eye 
and  fervid  tones  that  in  personal  intercourse  are  the 
touchstones  of  genuineness.  It  differed,  as  the 
weathercock  differed  from  the  compass,  from  that 
other,  uncompromising  sincerity  that  offends  all  the 
world  by  sticking  with  stubborn  conviction  to  one 
point.  It  arose  out  of  a  character  that  was  at  any 
moment  all  of  one  piece,  one  whose  intellect  never 
contradicted  the  feelings,  whose  lyric  vein  was  so 
dominant  that  the  reason  was  but  the  ready  con 
jurer  of  expressions  to  clothe  the  emotions.  It  was 
a  genuine  sincerity,  but  it  was  the  sincerity  of  the 
weather.  It  had  no  inner  antagonism  to  cast  doubts 
on  its  own  consistency.  It  took  life  altogether 
passionally;  its  test  of  truth  was  the  immediate 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  149 

thump  of  the  heart.  Memory  and  reason,  if  they 
should  have  contradicted  the  passing  emotion,  would 
have  been  discredited  as  the  creatures  of  an  ex 
perience  that  was  dead  —  valueless  conservatives 
clinging  with  pathetic  loyalty  to  the  outworn  con 
ditions  among  which  they  had  been  born. 

He  saw,  therefore,  in  this  friend  of  his,  a  type  — 
heightened  indeed  beyond  the  normal  run  of  men, 
but  so  much  the  more  the  type  —  of  the  modern 
man  who  had  substituted  the  immediate  for  the 
remote,  the  aesthetic  appeal  for  the  moral  principle, 
and  who  gave  to  art  its  conquering  modern  vogue  — 
the  man  who  had  suppressed  his  inner  duality.  He 
saw  in  this  suppression  the  elements  of  modernism  — 
sincerity,  enthusiasm,  sympathy,  a  carelessness  of 
the  past,  a  rejection  of  tradition  and  authority,  a 
ready  response  to  the  feelings,  and  an  unlimited  flow 
of  reasons  to  justify  the  current  emotion.  And  he 
saw  in  the  aestheticism  of  his  time  a  symptom  of 
the  malady  of  which  he  conceived  culture  to  be  sick. 

Just  now  he  was  interested  in  art  —  our  dualistic 
friend  —  and  in  his  eternal  pursuit  he  began  pretty 
near  the  bottom.  He  began  with  the  senses.  The 
window  at  which  he  sat  looked  out  on  a  quad 
hemmed  in  by  Gothic  buildings  whose  low  eaves 
stemmed  the  tide  of  ivy  that  flowed  up  the  many- 
windowed  walls.  Some  gardener  of  old  had  set  elms 
within  the  corners,  and  below  his  window  a  cherry 
tree  had  sprung  up  from  a  pit  dropped  in  the  grass 
by  some  unrecorded  lounger.  As  he  sat  now,  looking 
out  on  the  scene  of  which  he  never  tired,  two 
students,  leisurely  exceptions  to  the  busy  norm,  lay 
in  the  shade  of  the  early  leaves  and  their  lazy  voices 


150  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

came  up  to  his  open  window.  The  moment  won  a 
lively  response  from  him.  He  felt  its  perfection. 

The  point  of  his  present  distinction,  however  — 
he  was  always  making  distinctions  —  was  that  this 
was  not  all  that  there  was  to  be  said  about  it.  There 
was  something  else  in  him  beside  and  behind  the 
sense  of  its  external  beauty,  even  behind  his  grati 
fication  at  the  sense  of  this  beauty  —  something  to 
which  it  reported.  It  was  something  that  perceived, 
was  gratified,  and  could  be  critically  interested  and 
amused  by  the  process  of  automatic  gratification. 
He  knew  that  this  pursuit  might  be  endless  without 
taking  him  very  far,  for  he  might  always  find  an 
awareness  in  his  mind  that  would  envelop  suc 
cessively  each  preceding  awareness,  like  those  classes 
of  classes  of  a  certain  modern  school  of  mathematical 
logicians.  But  he  saw  that  there  was  something 
gained  by  this  process  of  going  at  least  one  step 
behind  the  simple,  grateful  sensations.  He  had  a 
more  masterly  control  over  the  allurements  of  them. 

There  were  enough  people  around  him  who 
stopped  at  the  first  stage.  With  most  of  them,  in 
deed,  he  had  a  hearty  sympathy  —  frank,  genial 
beings,  the  bulk  and  sinew  of  humanity,  who  ate 
and  drank  and  golfed  without  pretense  and  without 
curiosity.  He  liked  them.  They  made  up  the 
spectacle  of  life,  the  pathos  and  romance  of  its 
comedy.  They  were  in  both  senses  the  hosts  of  the 
world,  among  whom  the  thoughtful  were  but  the 
rare  and  suffered  guests.  The  worst  that  he  had 
against  them  was  that  in  their  idleness  and  leisure 
and  unreflecting  pleasantness  they  gave  acclaim  to 
a  class  of  practitioners  whose  pretense  was  to  be  of 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  151 

the  reflective  part  of  mankind,  but  who  were  in 
reality  like  themselves  —  merely  sensational.  He 
was  thinking  of  the  art-mongers.  Against  the  art- 
mongers  he  had  on  principle  a  vigorous  grudge. 

Grudge  was  indeed  a  vigorous  word,  as  he  smiled 
to  realize,  feeling  his  own  great  love  of  the  senses. 
His  whole  past  was  a  web  of  brightly  colored  visions; 
he  acknowledged  his  captivity  to  the  marbles  of 
Praxiteles,  to  the  canvases  of  Leonardo;  music 
haunted  his  reflective  moments.  In  one  sense  he 
had  a  reputation  for  sensuousness  that  made  him  in 
some  quarters  disliked  and  mistrusted.  He  in 
dulged  his  minor  vices.  Asceticism  seemed  to  him 
a  pretty  poor  virtue  —  a  feeder  of  pride,  a  breeder 
of  intolerance.  He  liked  to  find  in  others  the  hu 
manizing  touch  of  moderate  indulgence,  the  com 
munity  of  the  weed,  the  gemuthlichkeit  of  friendly 
beer,  the  sociability  of  wine.  There  seemed  to  him 
something  weak  in  a  too  fearful  avoidance  of  tempta 
tion,  in  the  too  sedulous  care  for  the  flesh.  There 
it  was,  the  flesh,  gross  perhaps,  asking  for  beef  and 
brew,  but  the  ironic  condition  of  there  being  a  spirit. 
And  he  had  not  seen  that  his  countrymen  in  denying 
it  certain  indulgence  had  made  a  nation  notable  for 
their  spiritual  attainment. 

There  seemed,  indeed,  a  kind  of  frank  safety  in 
answering  its  demands  by  a  mild  and  temperate 
dipping  into  the  admitted  vices.  Their  frank  labels 
marked  so  well  and  so  openly  the  dangers  that 
hedged  them  in.  The  real  peril  lay  in  the  subtle 
disguises  by  which  a  more  recondite  sensuousness 
passed  itself  off  as  something  nobler.  And  herein 
lay  his  case  against  the  arts.  By  calling  themselves 


152  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

something  else  they  evaded  the  bounds  of  temper 
ance,  and  by  adroit  labeling  they  secured  the  frank 
of  those  virtues  that  need  no  curb  in  a  sensuous 
world. 

He  doubted,  tentatively,  whether  the  arts  were 
altogether  something  else.  He  allied  them  offen 
sively  with  the  pleasures  of  the  senses,  exasperating 
humorless  devotees,  and  making  for  himself  the  re 
pute  that  he  was  not  sensitive  to  the  subtle  appeals 
to  the  spirit.  This  charge  was  so  easy  to  put  upon 
him,  and  had  illustrations  of  sensualists  who  did  see 
nothing  in  art  so  pat  to  its  hand,  and  won  partisans 
so  readily,  that  in  most  quarters  denial  was  useless. 
None  the  less  he  uttered  his  heterodoxy  for  the 
sake  of  amusing  experiences  that  invariably 
followed. 

When  put  to  it  the  devotees  had  little  to  say  for 
the  spirituality  of  art  —  little  to  say  that  they  could 
say.  What  it  did  for  them  was,  it  seemed,  some 
thing  that  they  could  not  say.  It  did  something 
unutterable.  In  the  face  of  his  amused  smile  it  was 
exasperating  for  them  to  have  nothing  more  in  its 
defense  than  that  they  liked  it,  enjoying  the  sen 
sations  and  emotions  that  it  induced.  It  was  no 
less  exasperating  to  them  that  he  could  say  as  much 
for  himself. 

They  did  indeed  maintain  that  there  was  some 
thing  else  behind  —  something  spiritual,  something 
indefinable  because  to  the  perception  of  it  there  was 
no  other  medium  than  the  particular  piece  of  art 
that  had  produced  it  —  that  each  specimen  of  art 
conveyed  a  unique  spiritual  experience.  In  the  safe 
elevation  of  such  vagueness  they  were  unassailable. 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  153 

When  in  his  vulgarity  he  suggested  that  mutton 
also  conveyed  a  sensation  that  was  unique  and  un 
utterable  he  did  nothing  but  convince  them  of  his 
grossness.  To  say  that  wine,  too,  elevated  the 
spirit  to  conceptions  that  had  no  other  means  of 
access,  and  that  all  their  claims  for  art  applied  ex 
actly  to  his  claims  for  sensuousness,  was,  they  said, 
to  take  advantage  of  a  duplicity  of  language,  a  pun, 
a  poverty  of  the  verbal  medium.  When  he  objected 
that  language  was  at  least  infinitely  less  vague  in 
the  expression  of  ideas  than  any  other  medium,  he 
was  confronted  by  the  assertion  that  the  highest 
reach  of  language  lay  in  its  suggestiveness  rather 
than  in  its  simple  and  exact  expression.  He  was 
referred  to  a  thousand  lyrics.  The  implication  in 
this  reasoning  was  that  as  language  approached  the 
arts  in  the  vagueness  of  its  signification  it  served  to 
confirm  the  arts  in  their  claim  for  significance. 

They  pointed  out  men  —  Walter  Pater,  for  ex 
ample —  who  had  shown  what  definite  ideas  art 
could  stimulate.  There  was  his  notable  passage  on 
the  Mona  Lisa.  It  was  but  a  further  exasperation 
to  suggest  that  this  definiteness  —  whatever  these 
writings  possessed  —  was  the  definiteness  of  lan 
guage  and  required  language  for  their  expression  — 
that  Pater  was  a  man  of  letters  expressing  in  letters 
his  own  thoughts. 

The  worst  was  that  he  himself  laid  claim  to  par 
ticipation  in  all  that  art  had  to  offer.  There  was 
no  mode  of  refuting  him  but  by  derision.  It  was 
clear  enough  that  the  inexpressible  may  have  lain 
in  him  as  well  as  in  them.  He  had  indeed  sedu 
lously  visited  the  galleries  of  Europe,  had  spent 


154  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

long  days  in  Paris  studios,  and  long  nights  in 
friendly  wranglings  with  artists  and  art  critics;  he 
had  worn  thin  underwear  and  shabby  clothes  in 
forced  expiation  for  the  purchase  of  beautiful  pic 
tures  and  costly  rugs.  But  these  evidences  only 
served  to  make  him  out  a  traitor  in  his  thoughts  to 
what  he  owed  so  much  to  in  fact. 

He  had  long,  indeed,  given  over  such  ill-natured 
bickerings.  And  on  the  whole  the  world  is  good 
humored  and  its  memory  is  short.  So  it  came  about 
during  this  winter,  with  the  sight  of  him  in  the  gal 
leries  and  the  rumors  of  his  pictures,  that  a  naive 
group  of  women  invited  him  to  address  them  on  the 
subject  of  modern  painting.  He  was  tempted  to 
accept,  but  the  good  angel  of  his  amenity  prompted 
him  to  send  them  first  an  outline  of  his  points,  and 
they  found  some  reason  for  postponing  the  occasion 
indefinitely.  It  never  came  off,  but  the  informal 
prospectus  got  about  somehow  to  a  wider  circle  than 
the  address  would  have  reached,  and  caused  some 
fuming  among  the  local  representatives  of  Culture. 

The  matter  was  one  of  the  kind  that  accumulates 
myths.  The  name  of  Art  had  not  had  a  questioning 
breath  breathed  upon  it  in  the  local  hearing,  and  the 
faintest  whisper  no  doubt  sounded  like  blasphemy. 
It  certainly  grew  to  blasphemy  in  rumorous  repe 
tition.  Our  friend  was  too  well  used  to  such  mis 
representations  to  wonder  at  them,  but  in  the  more 
charitable  mood  of  his  middle  years  he  felt  less 
arrogant  and  more  willing  to  explain —  perhaps  a 
little  more  anxious  for  sympathy.  At  all  events  he 
took  the  occasion  of  a  local  exhibit  to  send  to  a 
morning  paper  a  criticism  that  might  serve  to  ex- 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  155 

plain  the  points  he  had  made  in  the  misunderstood 
and  maltreated  outline. 

His  hatred  was  of  sham  and  of  the  wind-blown 
mists  that  had  come  to  be  the  atmosphere  in  which 
art  was  breathing,  and  he  hit  harder  than  he  quite 
realized.  He  counted  on  the  amenity  of  common 
sense  to  dulcify  his  blows,  and  forgot,  in  the  interest 
of  making  his  ideas  tell,  that  art  had  got  lifted  out 
of  the  reach  of  common  sense. 

There  was  a  tempest.  It  took  him  by  amaze,  for 
his  points  had  seemed  to  him  obvious,  but  more 
because  he  would  not  have  believed  that  the  par 
ticular  enemies  he  had  aroused  had  the  moral 
strength  to  be  robustly  angry.  They  were;  and  for 
a  time  life  scintillated  around  him  with  stirring 
flashes  of  romance.  He  would  have  said  that  none 
now  cared  enough  about  matters  of  art  and  intellect 
to  lose  sleep  over  their  battles,  but  he  found  that 
they  did  —  two,  at  least. 

For  one  March  dusk,  a  week  later,  he  discovered 
a  pair  of  shadows  following  him,  and  near  a  de 
serted  corner  he  was  set  upon  with  honest  fists  that 
had  little  token  of  decay.  The  pair  were  gallant 
enough  to  halt  him  and  issue  their  challenge  before 
they  set  to,  and  if  they  were  two  to  his  one  they 
may  have  reckoned  on  his  stout  cane.  He  had  the 
wall  of  them;  and  a  good  stick  and  a  good  arm  are 
better  than  two  men.  He  felt  their  fists  before  he 
felt  the  thrilling  tingle  of  a  blow  of  his  own  and 
saw  one  of  them  stagger.  The  other  gave  over  and 
went  to  the  aid  of  his  companion,  and  half  running 
dragged  him  away. 

Our  friend  shook  his  arm.    The  feel  of  his  blow 


156  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

was  in  it,  and  the  crushing  fall  of  the  stick,  and  it 
sickened  him.  He  had  a  sudden  sympathy  for  his 
assailants  and  for  their  anger  and  their  attack. 
From  their  voices  they  were  young  and  their  wrath 
had  been  stirred  over  a  principle  and  had  kept  hot 
for  a  week.  All  these  things  appealed  to  him. 
There  were  high  spirits  and  high  blood  there. 
Neither  then  nor  afterwards  could  he  think  of  the 
attack  as  cowardly.  He  had  the  advantage  to  his 
generosity,  as  he  smiled  to  reflect,  of  being  the  victor. 

He  said  nothing  of  the  affair,  and  never  heard  of 
it  or  of  his  assailants  from  outside.  But  he  noticed, 
in  writing  again  on  the  same  subject,  a  more  sym 
pathetic  note  in  his  style.  The  personal  contact, 
and  the  knowledge  that  what  he  had  said  had 
reached  home  somewhere  —  rare  enough  in  his  ex 
perience  —  touched  him  with  a  more  intimate  sense 
of  the  human  aspect  of  his  ideas.  Years  before,  he 
would  have  called  the  change  sentimental  —  the  ul 
timate  damnation  of  his  youthful  vocabulary.  But 
he  could  smile  now  and  indulge  the  gentler  mood, 
knowing  that  a  good  deal  of  such  softening  might 
leave  him  still  free  from  the  repute  of  sentimentality. 

His  ideas  did  not  change.  He  still  hated  the 
crude,  dehumanized  intellectualism  that  science  was 
foisting  on  humane  affairs,  and  he  still  hated  the  de- 
intellectualized  emotionalism  that  had  run  mad  in 
the  arts.  He  had  a  vision  of  harmony  —  of 
judgments  and  motives  born  of  a  nice  balance  of 
all  the  faculties.  What  he  saw  about  him  was  each 
faculty  snatching  up  some  part  of  life  and  running 
off  with  it  to  its  own  natural  extreme. 

"You  forget,"  one  of  his  friends  remarked,  "that 
this  is  the  age  of  the  specialist." 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  157 

"Ah,"  he  returned,  "that  is  just  what  I  can't 
forget  —  the  age  of  one-sided  judgments.  You  re 
member  the  Pretorian  Guards.  For  a  reasonable 
life  we've  got,  don't  you  see,  to  keep  the  military 
subordinate  to  the  civil  power  —  to  keep  the 
specialist  subordinate  to  the  judgment  that  co 
ordinates." 

"You  belong,  then,  to  those  modern  philosophers 
who  deny  the  difference  of  the  faculties?" 

Our  friend  smiled. 

"So  far  from  it!"  he  exclaimed.  "For  they  too 
are  tarred  with  the  same  stick.  They  see  the 
reasoners  running  off  to  one  extreme  and  they  rush 
off  to  another.  But  if  what  they  believed  were  so 
they  would  have  no  case  against  the  reasoners  or 
any  others,  for  the  reasoners  would  simply  be  using 
their  one  faculty,  according  to  the  formula.  No, 
the  thing  is  to  distinguish  clearly  in  order  to  pro 
portion  and  harmonize  —  to  be  intellectual  in  order 
to  be  able  to  judge  and  restrain  the  emotions,  and 
to  have  feelings  that  illuminate  the  intelligence  — 
that  is  the  balance  I  dream  of." 

"And  what  has  that  to  do  with  the  arts?" 

"Ah,  everything  in  the  world,"  he  returned. 


158  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 


ii 

SENSE  AND  THE  SOUL 

"You  intrigue  me,  you  artists,"  he  said  to  his 
friend  the  poet,  one  late  afternoon  as  they 
sat  before  the  window,  smoking  as  was  their  wont, 
and  looking  out  on  the  spring  that  was  invading  the 
quad. 

It  was  a  grateful  hour  —  the  time  of  day  when 
bodily  energy  has  worn  itself  into  fidgetless  repose, 
and  the  mind,  through  with  its  pedestrian  business, 
tries  its  wings;  when  silences  are  eloquent  of  peace, 
and  filled  with  the  moving  mystery  of  deepening 
colors  in  earth  and  sky,  and  talk  may  touch  itself 
with  poetry  and  yet  be  but  the  nice  prose  of  the 
moment.  It  was  the  time  of  year  when  memories 
go  backward  and  with  light  touch  cull  out  magic 
moments  of  childhood's  wonder  and  content,  or  re 
flect  upon  old  sorrows  the  mellowing  beneficence  of 
time. 

It  was  at  such  hours  and  such  seasons  that  the 
poet  had  come  into  the  way  of  dropping  in  to  spend 
the  dusk  in  silence  or  in  talk,  or  in  both,  as  the 
moment  went.  To-day  it  was  talk,  perforce,  for  his 
host  had  not  yet  shaken  off  the  world.  The  stains 
of  his  afternoon  journey  were  still  on  his  mind,  and 
he  was  still  brushing  them  off  while  his  guest  was 
composing  himself  in  the  window. 

"I  dare  say,"  smiled  his  friend.  "And  these 
things  have  a  way  of  being  reciprocal.  But  what 
have  we  done  now?" 

"Nothing  new.     What  you  have  always  done  — 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  159 

taken  a  simple  sensation  and  clothed  it  in  awesome 
terms." 

He  reached  to  the  table  by  his  side  and  drew  out 
a  handsome  volume  from  under  a  pile  of  handsome 
volumes. 

"Here  is  a  sample,"  he  went  on,  turning  to  a 
marked  passage.  "Listen  to  its  mystic  phrases: 
'Nothing  but  the  rare  strains  of  great  music  can 
reach  the  spiritual  height  of  this  half-seen,  somber 
landscape.'  Now  in  sober  truth  do  you  think  that 
a  picture  can  be  spiritual,  or  the  rare  strains  of 
great  music?  For  my  own  part  I  think  them  very 
pleasant  sensations.  They  seem  to  me  to  differ 
physically,  but  not  philosophically,  from  the  smell 
of  orange  blossoms  or  the  taste  of  mutton." 

The  poet  sat  back  in  his  chair,  his  eyes  brooding 
on  the  lacy  edge  of  the  elm  tree  outlined  against  the 
sky. 

"Gross!"  he  murmured  at  last,  "oh,  gross!  Give 
and  take,  my  friend,  is  the  legend  over  the  door  of 
your  mind.  That  is  why  some  of  us  like  to  come 
here  better  than  elsewhere.  But  gross!" 

"None  the  less  my  question  is  fair,"  pursued  his 
host.  "I  don't  say  that  the  taste  of  mutton  stirs  as 
pleasant  reactions  in  me  as  the  smell  of  orange 
blossoms,  or  that  these  in  turn  thrill  me  as  Wagner's 
Waldweben  never  fails  to  do.  I  admit  the  grossness 
of  mutton,  but  I  should  say  that  the  matter  is  simply 
a  gradation  within  the  same  field  —  sensations  that 
we  like  or  dislike  in  varying  degrees." 

"There  you  are,"  cried  the  poet.  "You  go  grub 
bing  like  a  mole  in  the  cellarage.  But  you  will 
never  find  it  there,  your  answer.  You  must  come 


160  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

out  into  the  sunlight.  Don't  you  see  that  all  your 
intellectual  distinctions  are  underground  burrowings, 
and  that  you  won't  find  this  natural  thing,  the 
spirit,  in  your  darkened,  artificial  rooms." 

"Your  music,  then,  and  your  landscapes,  and  your 
lyrics  —  " 

"Ah,  of  course  they  are  artificial  too.  But  don't 
you  see  where  they  lead  you?  Your  thoughts,  your 
reason,  your  logic,  are  all  matters  of  symbols  — 
symbols  too  of  your  own  invention  —  a  clever  net 
work  between  arbitrary  fixed  points.  But  your  arts 
go  direct  to  something  else,  to  something  native  and 
spontaneous  in  you.  There  are  gross  pictures,  and 
gross  music,  and  gross  verse.  But  there  is  a  kind 
of  music,  and  of  pictures,  and  of  verse  that,  as  you 
say,  are  high  in  the  scale  of  our  liking.  But  the 
difference  is  more  than  that  we  like  the  one  and  not 
the  other.  For  somewhere  in  the  scale  there  is  a 
subtle  line  beyond  which  there  enters,  in  some 
degree,  the  element  of  beauty.  And  beauty  is  a 
perception  of  the  soul." 

"Why  soul?" 

"For  no  reason,  I  am  afraid,  that  the  reason  can 
see.  But  in  our  intuitions  we  know  that  it  exists, 
and  we  know  it  in  the  measure  of  our  feelings,  not 
in  the  measure  of  our  logic.  Do  we  have  souls? 
With  reason  alone  we  should  never  have  thought  of 
such  things.  The  perception  is  one  of  the  emotions, 
and  so  I  think  we  have  a  right  to  say  soul.  Your 
lover  in  mid-ecstasy  is  surer  of  a  soul  than  your 
bank  clerk  in  mid-career  down  a  column  of  figures. 
And  your  poet  striding  the  moor  with  the  blast  in 
his  face  is  surer  of  it  than  when  he  is  seated  at  his 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  161 

typewriter  making  the  last  fair  copy  of  his  verse. 
And  this  perception  of  beauty  is  the  soul  in  one  of 
its  essential  exercises.  What  I  fear  for  you,  sir, 
whom  I  love  beyond  any  of  your  kind,  is  that  though 
you  like  certain  sights  and  like  certain  sounds,  you 
have  none  of  that  sense  of  beauty  whose  whisper 
ings  make  you  know  that  you  have  a  soul." 

"A  soul,"  his  host  mused.  "Yes,  here  we  may 
talk  freely.  I  like  to  go  back  to  old  out-fashioned 
discussions.  And  the  soul  is  out-fashioned  if  any 
thing  is.  Besides  it  is  one  of  your  characteristic 
words.  It  is  a  point  I  should  like  to  clear  up.  I  am 
really  in  earnest.  So  you  must  remember  my  un 
derlying  sympathy  if  I  push  you  a  little  hard.  For 
it  seems  to  me  that  you  and  your  kind  stand  at  the 
very  center  of  one  of  our  modern  weaknesses." 

"I  am  fortified." 

"Well,  in  this  sense  of  beauty,  and  in  the  emotions 
that  go  with  it  and  make  you  aware  of  the  soul,  tell 
me,  is  it  just  that  thrill  of  feeling  and  nothing  more 
that  makes  you  call  it  soul?" 

"How  do  you  mean?" 

"I  mean  that  when  you  have  an  intuition  of  the 
soul,  either  you  have  simply  the  emotions  that  ac 
company  beauty,  and  you  call  that  emotion  soul, 
or  that  emotion  makes  you  aware  of  something  else 
and  you  call  that  something  else  soul.  And  I  want 
to  know  which  you  mean." 

"Why,  then,  that  something  else." 

"Ah,  then  what  is  that  something  else?" 

The  poet  paused  for  a  moment,  and  a  slow, 
pleasant  smile  lighted  his  eyes. 

"I  know  my  answer  won't  satisfy  you,"  he  an- 


1 62  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

swered,  "for  there  you  sit  looking  for  it  without, 
with  cold  eyes.  And  its  very  quality  as  soul  makes 
it  invisible  from  without.  But  I  take  your  challenge. 
I  should  say  then,  that  it  is  an  intuitive  consciousness 
of  something  within  that  responds  to  what  we  have 
called  beauty." 

"To  beauty  alone?" 

"No,  to  beauty  among  other  things." 

"But  you  don't  budge  from  the  spot.  If  I  should 
speak  of  an  intuitive  consciousness  of  something 
within  me  that  responds  to  this  wine,  I  suspect  that 
you  would  refuse  to  call  that  something  soul.  But 
the  descriptions  are  the  same.  And  so  I  must  ask 
you  again  for  the  distinguishing  quality  that  makes 
the  one  soul  if  the  other  is  not." 

"If  I  speak,"  the  poet  returned,  "I  must  speak  of 
an  intuition.  An  intuition  is  just  what  you  will  not 
allow." 

"No,"  our  friend  protested,  "my  grossness  does 
not  go  so  far  as  that.  I  know  that  all  the  cunning 
in  the  world  could  not  put  into  words  the  subtle 
aroma  of  a  violet.  But  I  know  that  it  exists.  That 
is  a  sensation,  you  say.  But  just  there  is  my 
trouble.  I  cannot  distinguish  between  what  you 
have  called  intuition  and  the  senses  themselves." 

"But  the  one  is  above  the  earth;  the  others  are 
of  it.  The  one  lifts  you  out  of  yourself;  the  other 
is  the  response  of  the  flesh  itself." 

"But  why?  You  are  skeptical,  but  there  are 
odors  that  catch  me,  lift  me  out  of  myself,  out  of 
the  world,  and  bring  to  me  lucid,  magical  moments. 
And  in  such  moments  I  feel  the  vivid  conviction  of 
a  freedom  from  the  grossness  of  material  life." 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  163 

"Ah,  then  you  too  feel  an  intuition,  and  feel  the 
presence  of  the  soul." 

"I  wonder.  And  there  are  sounds  in  nature  and 
in  music,  and  sights  in  life  and  in  art,  that  carry  the 
same  conviction." 

"Then  why  not  soul?" 

"My  difficulty  is  still  that  all  this  seems  to  me 
merely  a  way  of  speaking  of  the  senses  and  our  re 
actions  to  them.  But  sense  and  soul,  even  in  the 
vernacular,  stand  in  opposition. 

"I  see  what  you  mean,"  said  the  poet.  "Not  that 
soul  may  not  be  grasped  intuitively,  but  that  if  it  is 
anything  to  speak  of,  if  it  has  anything  to  it  but  a 
ravishing  vacuum,  it  must  have  something  to  say 
for  itself  by  which  it  can  be  distinguished  from  the 
primary  intuitions  of  sense.  And  it  must  prove  its 
distinctive  worth.  That  is  a  fair  enough  demand." 

"Can  it  be  met?" 

They  sat  before  the  window  for  some  minutes 
before  the  poet  resumed. 

"If  I  am  to  imagine  a  world  without  beauty,"  he 
began  slowly  at  last,  "to  imagine  myself  with  all 
my  moments  conscious  only  of  gutters,  and  slums, 
and  Calvinism,  steel  bridges,  trousers,  pot  houses, 
coal  mines,  anthropology,  legislatures,  divorce 
courts,  fashion,  slang  —  it  would  be  to  imagine  my 
self  without  the  subtle  sense  within  me  that  I  am 
worth  more  than  the  dust.  But  I  have  had  other 
moments.  I  have  seen  the  sunrise.  Once  I  saw  an 
English  lark  in  the  sky.  I  have  seen  fair  faces, 
quiet  manners,  silks  clinging  to  graceful  forms, 
crocuses  in  March  snows,  the  quad  of  Oriel,  the 
Venus  de  Milo.  I've  listened  to  Bizet  and  Schubert, 


164  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

heard  the  wind  in  the  pines  on  the  edge  of  Pacific 
slopes.  I  have  read  Keats  and  Euripides.  And  it 
is  in  such  moments  that  I  know  that  these  and  not 
those  are  the  things  to  strive  for.  I  know  what 
direction  in  these  matters  life  should  take.  I  know 
which  soars  toward  heaven  and  which  sinks  to  hell. 
I  don't  know  why  I  know  it,  but  that  I  do  know  it, 
that  it  gives  an  impulse  that  lifts  the  whole  of  life 
into  a  thing  above  the  scum,  and  that  it  vitalizes  and 
enhalos  certain  aims  —  of  this  I  am  certain.  And 
so  I  say  soul." 

They  sat  another  few  moments  in  silence. 

"I  am  disarmed,"  said  his  host,  picking  up  the 
discourse.  "I  confess  that  when  you  began  a  little 
while  ago  to  use  the  word  I  imagined  dire  things  of 
you.  I  supposed  that  you  had  in  mind  something 
that  you  couldn't  describe.  I  know  that  life  has  its 
underlying  mysteries  —  that  the  simplest  thing  — 
the  smell  of  the  sod  that  comes  into  the  window 
here  and  makes  us  both  thrill  with  the  sense  of 
spring  —  can  only  be  accepted  and  not  explained. 
Why  I  like  it  I  don't  know.  It  is  one  of  the  primary 
mysteries. 

"What  I  was  arming  myself  against  was  a  new 
and  gratuitous  set  of  mysteries.  Your  friends  of  the 
artistic  shop  go  beyond  the  pale,  and  when  they 
say  soul,  many  of  them,  they  seem  to  intend  some 
thing  merely  mysterious.  It  is  often  open  to  doubt 
whether  they  themselves  know  what  they  mean. 
But  here  at  last  you  have  used  the  term  intelligently 
enough.  You  have  averred  that  beauty  is  a 
faculty  of  the  soul  and  that  the  soul  is  the  seat  of 
those  spontaneous  preferences  by  which  we  dis- 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  165 

tinguish  higher  and  lower,  better  and  worse.  You 
have  put  meaning  into  the  terms.  We  are  on  solid 
ground.  We  know  definitely  where  we  are." 

"Definitely?"  The  poet  had  a  touch  of  mockery 
in  his  smile. 

"Ah,  you  grow  literal.  No,  not  definitely,  but 
sufficiently  for  the  purpose." 

They  looked  at  the  last  orange  band  of  day  in 
the  west.  A  white  star  was  set  in  the  green  iris 
above  it,  and  the  first  quarter  of  the  moon  hung 
overhead. 

"I've  been  wondering  what  the  purpose  was," 
the  poet  said  at  last.  "Sometimes  I've  been  unkind 
enough  to  think  that  what  you  have  wanted  is  to 
bring  beauty  — "  he  waved  a  hand  toward  the 
sky  —  "  down  to  the  narrow  confines  and  dull  terms 
of  earth." 

"I  have.    I  have." 

"Heaven  help  you!" 

"For  I  would  make  life  beautiful." 

"By  cribbing  and  confining  it  to  paltry  terms  of 
reason?" 

"To  terms  that  make  it  significant.  For  don't 
you  see,  say  what  we  will,  we  can  never  alter  the 
eternal  fact  of  beauty.  The  intuition  of  it  stays 
the  same  whatever  the  phrases  we  use.  But  the 
discussion  of  it  belongs  to  the  workaday  world. 
And  so  it  is  important,  when  we  do  discuss  it,  and 
not  simply  experience  it,  to  use  terms  that  make  it 
commensurate  with  the  world  we  are  discussing  it 
in.  Why,  else,  discuss  it?  And  after  all  we  are 
concerned  with  art.  If  we  talked  of  beauty  it  was 
only  incidentally.  Beauty  exists.  But  art  is  a 


1 66  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

practice,  and  belongs  to  the  part  of  living  that  we 
control.  We  have  it  or  not,  or  in  such  and  such  a 
proportion,  as  we  will.  And  it  is  to  that  end  that 
it  is  worth  stopping  for  a  moment  in  the  contem 
plation  or  creation  of  beauty  to  discuss  it  —  to  find 
its  nice  place  and  proportion  in  the  workaday  process 
of  living." 

"And  yet,"  said  the  poet,  "I  don't  like  your  dull 
ing  intrusion  of  the  reason." 

The  last  light  of  the  sun  was  gone,  and  the  quad 
below  was  frosted  with  the  moon. 

"It  was  you  who  clarified  the  point,"  his  host 
smiled. 

"Ah,  evil  communications  —  " 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  167 

m 

ART  AND  THE  REASONERS 

IT  was  not  until  a  day  late  in  the  spring  that 
they  caught  up  again  the  thread  of  the  arts. 
The  evening  before,  wild  with  a  boisterous  north 
wind  and  a  purple  drift  of  clouds,  had  promised  a 
fine  morrow.  The  poet  had  proposed  an  early  start 
and  a  visit  to  the  dunes  by  the  lake,  to  put  the 
season's  best  day  to  a  good  use.  His  friend  had 
demurred  for  a  moment.  He  had  not  hunted  out 
Nature  for  many  years,  and  he  misdoubted  the  wel 
come  she  would  extend  to  him.  He  had  consented 
at  last,  however,  and  next  morning  the  two  men 
made  the  journey. 

If  they  talked  on  the  way,  youthfully,  forgetful 
of  the  years,  as  men  will  at  the  first  setting  out  on 
a  day's  jaunt,  they  had  little  enough  to  say  from  the 
moment  they  touched  the  loose  sands,  at  first  from 
the  soft  footing  that  used  their  breath,  and  after 
wards,  when  they  had  made  the  swale  between  two 
hummocks  that  had  hid  the  lake,  from  the  presence 
of  what  they  had  come  for.  For  they  were  young 
enough  still  to  feel  for  a  time  the  spell  of  the  place  — 
the  tumult  of  the  lake,  the  endless  stretch  of  flat 
beach,  the  dunes,  piled  and  scooped  and  hollowed  — 
a  world  of  blue  and  white,  and  of  yellow  sands,  with 
here  and  there  the  green  of  streaming  grasses, 
dwarfed  oaks  straining  landward,  and  vivid  lupin 
with  its  blue  flower  reflecting  the  sky.  They  were 
taken  possession  of  by  the  roaring  waters  and  the 
battering  wind,  and  by  the  sting  of  sand,  and  the 
glinting  sunlight. 


1 68  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

They  wandered  about  among  the  fantastic  archi 
tecture  of  the  dunes,  or  sat  in  sheltered  hollows 
where  the  sand  sifted  down  on  them  and  filled  the 
wrinkles  of  their  clothes.  They  were  silent,  a  lift 
of  the  hand  saying  all  there  was  to  say.  The  poet, 
however,  after  the  first  half  hour,  was  restless; 
something,  the  wind,  the  roar  of  the  waves,  some 
inner  wish  unsatisfied,  kept  him  ill  at  ease.  Once 
he  started  up  with  a  growl,  when  a  trim-bearded 
man  with  a  tin  canister  slung  from  his  shoulder 
came  into  their  vista.  The  invader  was  walking 
slowly,  with  eyes  riveted  to  the  sand  at  his  feet,  and 
apparently  lecturing  to  two  boys,  who  followed 
listening,  their  own  eyes  on  the  sand. 

To  our  friend  there  was  something  pleasant  in 
the  sight  of  these  three  naturalists,  so  blind  to  the 
large  impression  of  the  scene,  so  ardent  in  their 
attention  to  particular  details.  With  his  love  for 
the  spectacle  of  life,  and  the  sense  of  its  mingling  of 
many  interests  and  many  activities,  there  had  come 
now  and  again  in  the  course  of  the  morning  a  whisper 
of  emptiness  in  their  own  attempt  to  escape  from  it. 
He  responded  sensitively,  indeed,  to  the  thrill  of 
sight  and  sound,  and  for  moments  together  he  could 
forget  that  life  held  anything  beyond,  or  need  hold 
anything  beyond.  But  a  vague  discomfort,  some 
thing  more  than  the  sadness  of  beauty,  hung  like  a 
haze  in  the  atmosphere  of  his  mind.  And  now  it 
became  dimly  articulate.  He  pictured  the  three 
naturalists  home  again,  tired,  with  faces  burning, 
garrulous  about  the  day's  finds  and  silent  about  its 
beauties;  but  with  the  consciousness  of  that  back 
ground  of  boisterous  air  and  vivid  color  and  sweep- 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  169 

ing  lines  forever  endearing  the  memory  of  their  pre 
occupation.  By  contrast  their  own  search  for  the 
pure  thrill,  detached  from  a  justifying  substance, 
seemed  weak  and  futile. 

By  a  tacit  consent,  while  the  afternoon  was  still 
young,  they  turned  back  to  the  city.  Once  or  twice 
on  the  journey  the  poet  roused  himself  as  though  to 
speak,  and  then  sank  back  in  silence.  When  they 
alighted  he  insisted  on  taking  the  other  home.  He 
was  eager ;  he  had  unfinished  things  to  say. 

His  friend  was  interested,  amused.  The  poet  too, 
then,  had  found  the  thrill  insufficient.  A  little  sadly 
he  recognized  that  their  time  of  pure  illusion  had 
passed.  Nature  had  lost  its  personal  immediacy; 
its  sympathy  was  gone,  and  the  communion  that 
was  once  the  solace  of  such  wanderings  no  longer 
held  its  old  rapport.  They  were  humanized.  The 
significance  of  their  day  in  the  open,  if  it  was  to 
have  a  significance,  had  now  to  come  from  them 
selves,  to  be  wrought  out,  to  be  rationalized. 

When  they  had  settled  themselves  in  the  poet's 
snug  study,  and  had  broached  a  bottle  of  the  Ma 
deira  for  which  among  his  friends  he  was  as  re 
nowned  as  for  his  verse,  the  restlessness  of  the  day 
found  its  relaxation.  It  took  form,  on  the  part 
of  the  poet,  in  a  hearty  objurgation  of  the  trio  of 
naturalists.  Our  friend  was  amused  and  silent,  see 
ing  in  this  outburst  the  poet's  rebellion  against  the 
manifestations  he  had  felt  in  himself. 

"I  am  weary  of  the  reason,"  he  said,  "and  the  life 
of  reason.  Look  at  it  around  us  here.  Everything 
is  a  matter  of  calculation.  Sometimes  I  would  have 
the  old  life  of  duels  and  drink,  roistering  and  prison 


170  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

for  debt  again.  It  was  human  at  least.  Things 
are  in  the  saddle.  And  about  things  there's  nothing 
but  calculation.  There  used  to  be  young  men  moon 
ing  about  with  sonnets  in  their  brains.  Well,  they 
were  better  than  young  men  keen  about  the  stock 
market.  Freedom  and  justice  used  to  make  young 
orators  glow;  and  now  it's  all  statistics  and  eco 
nomics.  There  used  to  be  fierce  partisans  of  Achilles, 
and  Hector,  Ulysses,  Themistocles,  Coeur  de  Leon, 
Cromwell,  and  now  there  is  nothing  but  a  set  of 
clerks  grovelling  among  dusty  documents.  And 
where  of  old  we  used  to  have  young  men  who  would 
weep  over  the  Apology,  now  we  have  these  striplings 
following  that  parched  worm-monger,  brainbound, 
grubbing  there  in  the  midst  of  beauty,  as  insensible 
to  it  as  the  snails  that  the  sandpipers  turn  and  wheel 
and  turn  again  to  find  at  the  ebb  of  the  waves.  I 
want  to  see  the  old  generous  days  again  when  life 
was  human!" 

Our  friend  was  moved.  He  too,  in  his  own  way, 
had  mourned  the  mechanical  cast  that  economics, 
efficiency,  and  the  scientific  method  were  giving  to 
those  aspects  of  the  intellectual  life  that  could  flower 
best  untouched  by  that  baleful  trio.  But  he  knew 
that  the  poet,  from  his  own  point  of  view,  like  the 
Bergsonian  who  years  ago  had  warned  him  against 
the  reason,  was  not  free  himself  from  the  need  to 
reason  and  seem  reasonable.  He  detected  an  in 
teresting  distinction  that  might  be  worth  pursuit. 
The  poet's  note  of  rebellion  was  commonplace 
among  the  romantic  and  artistic  sects.  It  had  oc 
curred  to  him  not  infrequently  that  their  aversion 
to  the  reason  was  often  evident,  not  only  in  their 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  171 

words,  but  also  in  the  quality  of  their  ideas,  and 
that  art  itself  was  suffering  grievously  from  their 
malady. 

"Once  upon  a  time,"  he  said,  "you  will  remember, 
we  talked  about  beauty  and  the  soul.  I  sha'n't  soon 
forget  it;  you  did  something  that  is  hard  to  for 
give —  you  convinced  me  against  my  will.  I  dare 
say  that  it  wasn't  altogether  wasted  for  you,  for  you 
gave  us  both  a  clearer  sense  of  a  very  delicate  point. 
Well,  that  was  what  I  should  call  reasoning.  You 
will  remember  that  your  conclusion  was  that  the 
soul  was  the  center  of  our  intuitive  aspirations." 

"Spontaneous  ones,  not  reasoned." 

"Yes,  spontaneous.  But  there  lies  the  point.  You 
were  not  satisfied  to  have  your  intuitions.  You 
wanted  me  to  understand  and  agree  with  you  —  take 
the  same  attitude  to  beauty  that  you  took.  And 
there  you  were.  You  reasoned.  There  was  nothing 
else  for  it.  You  are  sociable;  you  like  your  friends, 
and  want  to  share  your  sense  of  the  world  with  them. 
That  is  one  use  of  the  reason,  and  I  imagine  that 
you  for  one  would  never  be  willing  to  give  it  up. 
You  are  even  a  poet.  But  there's  another  use.  The 
soul,  you  say,  is  the  center  of  spontaneous,  intuitive 
preferences  —  beauty,  courage,  wisdom,  honor, 
justice,  religion,  and  all  the  other  high  aspirations 
that  make  us  head  in  one  direction  and  not  in  an 
other.  And  living  is  an  affair  calculated  at  its  best 
to  carry  out  these  aspirations." 

"Yes." 

"And  these  aspirations  are  spontaneous,  not 
reasoned." 

"Yes." 


172  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"Then  there  lies  the  second  use.  Which  aspira 
tions  shall  we  follow,  and  in  what  proportions?  For 
they  spring  up  of  themselves,  and  sometimes  at  in 
opportune  moments;  and  often  they  conflict.  Shall 
I  buy  a  certain  Tudor  sideboard  that  I  long  for  with 
my  love  of  beauty,  or  the  Plutarch  that  I  long  for 
with  my  love  of  wisdom,  or  pay  off  the  family  debt, 
that  I  groan  under  with  my  sense  of  duty,  or  help 
poor  Oakly  the  bankrupt,  in  the  next  street,  that  I 
feel  sorry  for  with  my  sympathy?  The  color  of 
life,  personal  and  social,  depends,  doesn't  it,  upon 
such  judgments,  and  upon  the  proportions  that  our 
responses  take  in  following  them?" 

"Perhaps.    Go  on." 

"You  don't  love  the  spectacle  of  monasticism,  all 
religion  and  little  beauty,  with  its  evasion  of  the  full 
moral  struggle  of  social  life.  But  that  monasticism 
represents  one  set  of  proportions,  and  is  dictated  by 
an  intuition  that  has  high  claims  upon  the  soul.  I 
mean  religion.  And  you  don't  care  for  the  spectacle 
of  Calvinism,  all  morals  and  religion  but  no  beauty. 
But  there's  another  set  of  proportions.  Benvenuto 
Cellini  is  a  more  pleasing  spectacle  perhaps,  but  I 
doubt  whether  you  would  care  for  a  life  built  on  his 
proportions.  Even  he  had  his  religion  and  his  fine 
courage,  as  well  as  his  sense  of  beauty.  Baudelaire, 
Paul  Verlaine,  George  Moore  nauseate  you;  you 
don't  care  for  their  proportions." 

"And  you  —  you  would  throw  us  to  the  mercy  of 
the  three  grub-hunters  who  passed  us  to-day,  crawl 
ing  through  paradise  with  their  noses  in  the  sand?" 

"Hardly.  And  yet  they  stand  for  something. 
They  have  a  sense  of  reason,  and  if  they  would  only 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  173 

stick  to  science,  as  they  so  roiled  you  by  doing  to 
day,  I  should  have  no  objection  to  them." 

"You  do  chafe  at  them,  then?" 

"And  respect  them  too.  For  I  can't  help  seeing 
that  the  reason  is  the  authority  for  us  all." 

"Again!" 

"With  a  distinction.  It's  just  the  distinction  that 
you  seem  not  to  make  —  between  the  scientific 
reason  and  the  moral  reason.  We've  allowed  the 
scientists  to  get  us  all  adrift  in  the  matter.  They 
haven't  made  the  distinction  either.  But  their 
reason  is  not  my  reason  nor  yours.  We  are  con 
cerned  with  the  moral  reason.  It's  the  moral  reason 
that  is  the  final  authority.  Is  that  a  bold  statement? 
I  dare  say  that  some  day  they  will  come  to  ac 
knowledge  its  truth." 

"I  don't  know  just  where  you  are  taking  me,"  the 
poet  smiled,  "but  you've  turned  down  a  pleasant 
lane,  and  I'll  go  with  you  for  a  way.  It's  not  much 
worn,  this  lane." 

"I  know.  The  whole  current  of  traffic  just  now 
is  over  the  scientific  road.  The  opinion  that  is  go 
ing  about  is  that  science  is  the  final  authority  in  all 
things.  Well,  it  isn't." 

His  host  sat  up  with  reviving  interest. 

"I'm  inclined  to  agree  with  you,"  he  returned. 
"Still  let  me  take  up  the  cudgels.  I  can  remember 
the  thrill  of  the  moment  when  the  scientific  vision 
came  on  me  first  —  of  hierarchies  of  laws  governing 
the  greatest  motions  and  the  subtlest  reactions  of  the 
outstretching  universe,  from  the  stars  down  to  the 
least  quiver  of  conscious  emotion.  The  conception 
is  thrilling.  I've  rebelled  and  hid  away  the  thought 


174  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

in  the  dark  cellars  of  my  mind.  But  I  can't  forget 
it." 

"But  that  is  not  science." 

"How  do  you  mean  —  not  science?" 

"It's  a  vision;  it's  poetry." 

"But  science?" 

"Something  humbler,  I  should  say  —  a  body  of 
human  knowledge.  After  all,  what  more  is  it? 
They  used  to  smile  with  scorn,  half  a  century  ago, 
at  our  naive  old  anthropocentric  notions  of  life,  and 
praise  science  for  releasing  us  from  such  egotistic 
fancies.  They  strutted  and  swelled  about  a  good 
deal,  those  old  scientists,  in  their  humility.  They 
were  proud  of  their  discovery  that  humanity  was 
only  a  cousin  to  the  brutes,  an  accident  of  the  great 
process,  a  mere  worm.  Well,  they  never  got  away, 
of  course,  from  the  anthropocentric  attitude.  Their 
pride  was  in  their  own  very  human  accomplish 
ment.  I'm  not  at  all  sure  but  that  they  were  more 
anthropocentric  than  the  old  theologues ;  the  latter  at 
least  conceived  a  God  outside  themselves. 

"The  point  is,  isn't  it,  that  to  be  sure  we  may  be 
mere  worms  under  the  feet  of  universal  law,  and 
everything  from  the  motions  of  the  stars  to  the 
subtlest  quiver  of  emotion  may  be  determined  by  an 
inevitable  mechanical  necessity,  but  that  science 
isn't  universal  law;  it  is  only  human  knowledge,  and 
can  never  be  anything  more  than  human  knowledge. 

"The  old  scientists  —  what  a  race  they  were!  — 
egotists  of  the  sublimest  kind !  I  can't  help,  myself, 
admiring  their  colossal  pride.  It's  the  stuff  of  all 
great  and  spectacular  heroism.  What  they  tried  to 
do  —  really  thought  they  were  doing  —  was  to  look 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  175 

down  on  poor  humanity  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  gods.  Only,  of  course,  like  all  other  mortals, 
they  couldn't.  They  had  no  more  knowledge  than 
human  knowledge.  How  could  they?  And  their 
pride  was  a  very  human  pride  in  their  human  knowl 
edge." 

"I  see  your  point,"  the  poet  mused  —  "that  being 
human  we  can't  get  above  our  own  point  of  view. 
If  we  could,  still  it  would  be  our  own  point  of  view, 
ad  infinitum.  The  world  is  important  for  us  be 
cause  we're  here,  and  its  values  for  us  are  inevitably 
its  human  values.  But  still  if  the  scientists  —  I'm 
drawing  from  that  vision  that  I  hate  —  are,  in  their 
human  way,  attaining  a  knowledge  of  those  uni 
versal  laws,  why  aren't  they  the  final  authorities  in 
human  affairs?" 

"You  come  to  the  subtle  point,"  his  friend  re 
turned.  "I  don't  know  that  I  have  the  skill  to  put 
it,  but  I  should  say  something  like  this.  All  these 
things  that  we  exercise  moral  judgment  in  —  things 
that  are  involved  in  this  matter  of  authority  as  we 
have  used  the  word  —  all  these  things  are  outside 
the  specific  range  of  science.  If  there  is  something 
resembling  universal  law,  then  that  law  will  go  on 
operating  no  matter  what  we  do.  Disease  is  as  much 
an  expression  of  it  as  health,  misery  as  much  as 
happiness,  anarchy  as  much  as  order.  What  does 
universal  law  care?  If  science  were  all  in  all  we 
might  let  things  drift.  It  would  be  as  much  pleased 
with  blight  as  with  blooming  orchards.  But  don't 
you  see,  humanly  we  desire  some  operations  of  that 
law  more  than  others  —  health  instead  of  sickness, 
justice  instead  of  injustice,  comfort  instead  of  dis 
comfort. 


176  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"Being  human  we  inject  certain  preferences  into 
the  pot.  And  I  suspect  that  at  bottom  we  value  this 
body  of  human  knowledge  called  science,  and  cul 
tivate  it  so  sedulously,  because  we  believe  that  it  can 
serve  us  in  attaining  these  preferences.  We  set  up, 
don't  we,  an  idea  of  human  character  and  an  idea 
of  social  relations  that  we  think  admirable.  And  on 
the  basis  of  those  ideas  we  go  in  for  science,  or  don't 
go  in  for  it,  or  go  in  for  it  in  a  certain  degree.  What 
else  is  there,  ultimately,  to  prompt  us  in  the  matter? 
Certainly  not  universal  law.  It  goes  on  with  or 
without  our  approval  indifferently  —  as  much 
pleased  when  a  man  dies  of  consumption  as  when 
he  dies  of  old  age. 

"Universal  law  goes  on  whether  scientists  are 
there  to  search  into  its  secrets  or  not.  But  whether 
there  shall  be  any  science  is  a  matter  of  moral 
judgment.  Shall  a  man  be  a  barber,  or  a  lawyer  or 
a  scientist?  Not  science  but  moral  judgment  de 
termines.  Shall  an  institution  cultivate  science; 
shall  a  community  have  such  a  thing;  shall  there  be 
such  a  thing;  what  direction  shall  it  take;  what  use 
shall  it  be  put  to,  or  not  be  put  to?  All  of  these 
things  are  matters  of  moral  judgment." 

"Yet  science  gives  you  authentic  guidance." 

"Information  rather,  isn't  it?  Just  as  the 
plumber  gives  you  information  about  pipes  but 
doesn't  help  you  as  to  whether  to  tap  the  mains 
surreptitiously." 

"There  is  a  distinction." 

"And  so  I  say  that  in  the  large  it  is  the  moral  and 
not  the  scientific  authority  that  is  final." 

"And  the  point  of  all  this?" 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  177 

"Ah,  was  there  a  point?" 

"I'm  sure  there  was." 

"I  remember.  When  you  think  of  the  reason  and 
rebel  against  its  hardness  and  coldness,  and  its  me 
chanical  obtuseness  to  the  humaner  things  that  you 
care  so  much  for,  isn't  it  the  scientific  reason  that 
you  have  in  mind?" 

"I  dare  say.  But  what  has  this  to  do  with  beauty? 
There  it  is  —  a  thing  in  itself.  Little  it  recks  for 
you  and  your  moral  reason." 

"Exactly.  And  little  the  universal  laws  care  for 
us  and  our  moral  reason.  But  here  we  are.  Life  is 
a  matter  of  living  in  the  midst  of  all  the  things  that 
are  given  —  the  donnes  of  existence  —  beauty 
among  the  rest.  And  there  we  are.  The  question  is 
how  to  make  out  the  kind  of  life  we  aspire  to  among 
all  the  conditions  and  pressures  and  demands  that 
we  find  ourselves  among  willy  nilly.  If  beauty  were 
the  only  claimant  the  case  would  be  simple,  but  it 
isn't,  and  for  very  few  is  it  even  the  chief.  Hence 
the  question  of  proportion;  and  hence  the  need  of 
reason." 

"That  is  all  very  reasonable,"  said  the  poet  with 
a  resigned  smile,  "and  very  dull.  But  contrast  this 
morning  with  this  last  hour;  which  shall  we  both 
remember  the  longer,  and  with  more  pleasure?" 

"Contrast  prose  and  verse,  wages  and  wine," 
smiled  his  guest.  "I  grant  the  dullness,  but  it  is 
you  romanticists  who  have  made  it  necessary  to  go 
back  over  the  old  ground.  It  was  conquered  ground 
once." 

"What  will  you  make  of  it  once  you  have  retaken 
it?" 


178  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"Another  long  story,  and  equally  dull.  Besides 
there  is  a  tawny  sunset  to  light  us  to  dinner.  Come." 

"I  dare  say  you  care  no  more  for  the  reason  than 
I  do/'  said  the  poet,  reaching  for  his  hat. 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  179 


rv 
MADAME'S  TASTE 

THEY  set  out  one  afternoon  afoot,  with  no 
other  intention  than  to  end  up  before  a  good 
dinner  and  bring  to  it  a  worthy  appetite.  They 
decided  promptly  upon  an  obscure  little  restaurant 
some  half  dozen  miles  away,  of  which  they  had  been 
told,  and  where  certain  things  were  to  be  had.  The 
way  thither  was  by  one  of  those  long  streets  of  our 
American  cities  that  can  acquire  no  atmosphere 
about  their  names  because  they  cut  mechanically 
through  a  score  of  atmospheres  —  streets  which 
plunge  ahead,  looking  neither  to  right  nor  to  left, 
and  pass  from  opulence  to  poverty  without  a  pause, 
without  a  bow,  and  reveal  but  the  more  cruelly  the 
ancient  stratification  that  democracy  has  had  no 
power  to  fuse. 

As  they  went  they  talked  of  other  wanderings  in 
other  cities,  and  inevitably  of  London,  where  per 
haps  more  than  anywhere  else  the  lover  of  streets 
may  find  the  things  he  loves  —  the  irregularity  that 
gives  to  each  stretch  its  own  character,  the  jogs  and 
turns,  the  alleys,  the  passages,  the  buildings  infinite 
in  their  dingy  ugliness  but  with  the  charm  of  some 
thing  human  in  their  huddled  adaptation  to  the 
ancient  stresses  of  the  maze;  the  surprise  of  un 
expected  gardens,  of  quiet  churchyards,  of  market 
squares;  the  humanity  that  seems  to  have  sprung 
from  the  stones,  so  adapted  are  the  types;  above  all 
the  names  that  bring  to  the  bare  present  the  enrich 
ing  association  of  past  times,  household  words  of 


180  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

the  mind  to  which  life  is  endeared  by  the  sense  of 
the  long  human  struggle. 

By  contrast  the  way  they  were  going  seemed  bare 
and  mechanic.  They  knew,  indeed,  that  part  of  their 
loss,  part  of  what  they  missed,  was  due  to  their  in 
digenous  eyes,  that  custom  had  robbed  them  of  the 
surprise  that  a  traveler  from  other  parts  would 
have  enriched  the  spectacle  with,  that  what  they 
saw  revealed  itself  to  them  too  plainly  and  left  no 
room  for  surmise.  But  they  knew  too  that  some 
thing  was  missing  there  —  that  in  the  bare  economic 
struggle  which  alone  seemed  to  express  itself  in  the 
variation  from  block  to  block  as  they  tramped  on 
was  not  the  stuff  to  accumulate,  even  in  the  passage 
of  time,  the  particular  things  that  had  endeared  the 
greater  ugliness  of  the  older  Babylon. 

For  a  moment  they  questioned  the  justice  of  this 
accusation,  it  was  so  tainted  with  the  dear  plati 
tudes  with  which  a  business  community  refreshes 
itself  in  its  pauses  for  breath.  How  they  hated 
those  voices  that  were  so  little  different,  explicitly, 
from  their  own!  And  they  recalled  with  sad  mer 
riment  that  interjection  of  Thackeray's  —  that 
"other  quacks,  plague  take  them"  with  which  he 
put  the  ineffable  last  touch  upon  himself  and  upon 
the  world  of  Vanity  Fair.  But  they  knew  they 
were  right.  The  getting  of  a  living  was  important, 
as  were  other  contributions  levied  by  nature,  but  it 
was  not  the  thing  that  stirred  the  loyalty  that  — 
each  in  his  own  way  —  they  had  for  what  was 
human.  And  as  they  passed  along  the  endless  suc 
cession  of  house-fronts  suggestive  of  so  little  but  that 
eternal  office  of  nature,  more  and  more  dingy  as 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  181 

they  went  on  but  without  variation  in  kind,  they 
drew  their  conclusions  in  silence. 

From  the  region  of  fenced  gardens  they  had  come 
into  the  region  of  unfenced  gardens,  then  into  the 
region  of  narrow  houses  wall  to  wall,  then  into  a 
shabby  region  where  boarding  houses  and  modistes, 
and  bakeshops  and  midwives  held  forth  on  placards 
or  brass  plates,  then  on  to  miles  of  tenements  with 
here  and  there  weedy  lots  between  that  held  flaunt 
ing  billboards  begging  the  public  to  change  its 
tradesmen;  and  at  last  were  come  to  a  region  so 
ugly  with  blear-paned  shops,  and  dingy  beer  saloons, 
and  dark  dens  of  poverty  up  the  narrow  stairs  be 
tween,  that  the  poet  groaned  aloud. 

It  was  on  the  farther  edge  of  this  region  that 
they  were  to  find  the  little  restaurant  where  certain 
things  were  to  be  had.  The  poet  had  had  explicit 
directions  from  someone  who  had  been  there,  but 
his  memory,  though  vivid,  was  at  fault.  Knowing, 
however  that  they  were  in  the  neighborhood  of  it 
they  began  inquiring.  No  one  seemed  able  to  tell 
them  where  it  was.  It  was  getting  on  to  dusk,  a 
time  when  most  prospects  succumb  to  the  charm  of 
deepening  colors  and  softening  shadows,  but  to  the 
ugliness  around  them  it  added  only  the  horror  of 
increasing  gloom.  Screaming  children,  drunken 
men,  rowdy  groups  of  loafers,  shabby  beshawled 
women  swarmed  the  littered  walks  and  gutters.  The 
roar  of  the  street  cars  and  traffic  mingled  with  the 
roar  that  came  out  of  the  open  doors  of  the  saloons 
in  a  ceaseless  din. 

They  put  their  heads  into  the  front  doors  of 
steamy  eating  houses,  their  noses  attacked  by  the 


1 82  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

thousand  smells  of  rank  food  and  rank  humanity, 
and  their  ears  by  the  crash  of  dishes  and  the  roar  of 
voices.  They  retreated  to  the  street  to  be  jostled, 
to  be  ignored,  to  be  brazenly  solicited.  Once  they 
penetrated  to  the  interior  of  a  garish  palace,  red  and 
gold,  with  colossal  nudes  looking  down  on  the  flashy 
sordidness  of  the  gayety  at  the  tables  below  them. 
Again  they  backed  into  the  street. 

"Let  us  get  away  from  here,"  the  poet  groaned 
again. 

"Nil  humanum  —  "  his  friend  smiled  sadly. 

"You  are  right.    Let  us  go  on  looking." 

They  ranged  along  the  squalid  house-fronts  weary 
and  ashamed.  At  last  with  the  aid  of  a  child,  whose 
hard  face  stared  at  them  from  under  a  ragged  shawl, 
they  were  taken,  with  misgivings,  into  a  gloomy 
basement  under  high  street  steps.  It  was  a  sinister, 
lowering  spot.  Their  guide  left  them  with  a  shriek, 
at  the  wealth  in  her  hand  or  at  the  ruse  she  had 
played  them,  they  could  not  tell. 

They  were  in  a  little  hall,  grim,  bare,  lighted  by 
a  single  gas  burner.  A  door  opened  half  way  down. 
An  ancient  waiter  with  black,  short  jacket  and  white 
apron  stood  bowing  in  the  doorway,  his  black  sleek 
hair  shining  under  the  gas  flare.  Reassured  they 
went  in  to  the  inner  room. 

They  knew  at  once  that  they  had  arrived.  Their 
first  impression  was  of  silence,  and  then  of  something 
more  penetrating  and  more  restful  —  a  hard  and 
clean  simplicity.  It  was  a  low  basement  room  set 
out  with  a  dozen  black  tables  and  black  kitchen 
chairs  with  flat  backs  and  narrow  waists.  The  walls 
were  white.  At  the  front  was  a  high  white- 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  183 

curtained  window.  A  red  rose  on  the  sill  and  a  red 
rose  on  each  table  were  the  only  touches  of  color. 

At  the  back  of  the  room,  on  a  little  platform  be 
hind  a  comptoire  sat  Madame,  large,  shapeless, 
stolid,  with  a  peasant's  face,  her  black  hair  flat  on 
her  small  head.  Our  friends  took  places  not  far 
from  this  throne,  followed  by  the  waiter  with  card 
and  menu.  He  hung  above  them  patiently,  bent  at 
the  hips,  in  the  half  humble,  half  fatherly  way  of 
old  French  waiters  who  have  attained  wisdom  from 
their  vantage  ground.  He  beamed  when  the  poet 
spoke  in  his  own  tongue. 

When  he  was  gone  the  two  men  sat  in  silence. 
They  were  the  only  guests  as  yet,  and  the  place  had 
uninterrupted  leisure  to  sink  into  their  consciousness. 
Its  quiet,  its  unadornment,  its  bare  honesty,  had 
much  to  say  to  them  that  they  could  not  retell  at 
once.  They  felt  together  its  rebuke.  It  was  not 
pretty;  it  was  not  cunningly  contrived.  It  was  the 
expression  of  something  simple  and  austere.  They 
agreed  that  it  was  beautiful,  and  that  Madame,  with 
her  impassive  face  that  Millet  might  have  painted, 
humanized  it. 

No  doubt,  as  they  knew,  it  was  partly  the  mem 
ories  of  old  inns  in  Normandy  that  charmed  them, 
and  partly  too  the  refuge  it  had  been  to  them,  the 
sudden  contrast,  the  unspeakable  ugliness  it  had 
been  an  escape  from.  All  that,  however,  had  its 
point;  the  place  had  for  their  grateful  sense  but  the 
more  bravely  maintained  its  ancient  virtues  amidst 
the  squalor  and  sordidness  of  the  neighborhood. 
And  if  now  it  had  come  to  be  known  to  a  few,  like 
themselves,  from  so  different  a  world,  it  must  have 


1 84  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

had  its  years  of  sordid  local  struggle  before  such 
knowledge  could  get  abroad. 

"You  have  been  here  long,  madame?"  the  poet 
asked. 

"It  has  been  many  years,  monsieur,"  she  an 
swered,  impassively. 

They  would  have  liked  to  talk  to  her,  to  ask 
questions,  to  gain  the  tale  of  her  childhood,  of  her 
migration,  of  her  experience  during  those  many 
years,  but  something  that  they  both  felt,  the  re 
buke  of  their  idle  curiosity,  held  them  back.  Be 
fore  their  dinner  arrived  the  tables  had  begun  to 
fill  up,  and  their  chance  was  gone. 

Only  twice  did  the  stolidity  of  Madame's  face 
and  attitude  relax.  Once  the  door  by  her  side 
swung  open  and  a  nurse,  herself  scarcely  more  than 
a  child,  entered  carrying  a  black-haired  baby  and 
set  it  upon  the  comptoire  before  her.  The  nurse 
withdrew  without  a  word  and  left  the  two  together. 
It  was  like  a  ceremony.  In  a  little  while  a  young 
woman,  slender,  and  with  a  face  solemnly  happy, 
came  in  and  took  the  baby  away.  Scarce  a  word 
passed  between  them. 

"They  were  born  here,  lived  here,  daughter  and 
grandchild?"  the  poet  asked  of  the  waiter  who  stood 
beaming  on  the  tableau. 

"Yes,  monsieur,"  the  waiter  replied. 

"You  are  thriving  now?" 

"Yes,  monsieur,  now." 

"There  was  a  time,  then  —  " 

The  old  waiter  glanced  down  the  room,  and  then 
turned  again  to  the  two  guests  at  the  table  by  the 
rail. 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  185 

"I  speak  of  what  I  have  seen,  messieurs,"  he  be 
gan.  "What  I  speak  of  is  past  and  gone,  and  we  are 
as  you  see  us.  But  there  was  a  time  —  " 

He  was  called.  Twice  again  he  drew  near  to  their 
table  but  both  times  he  was  drawn  away  before  he 
could  go  on. 

"It  is  as  well,"  said  the  poet.  "One  can  piece  out 
the  tale." 

"Still,  I  should  like  the  particulars,"  his  friend 
demurred. 

But  the  chance  was  gone.  Reluctantly  they  left 
when  the  dinner  was  done. 

"Les  messieurs  have  been  well  served?"  Madame 
asked  as  they  bowed  good-night  to  her. 

The  poet  answered  from  his  heart,  and  for  a 
moment  her  face  again  softened. 

Our  friends  passed  out  of  the  dingy  hall  into  the 
dingier  street,  where  the  night  life  had  already 
begun  —  the  shouting,  the  strains  of  music  from  the 
lighted  saloons,  the  shrieks  of  children  gathered 
about  the  doors,  the  shawled  women  gossiping  in 
shrill  groups,  loafers  leaning  against  dark  walls, 
reeling  figures  mumbling  to  themselves,  dirt,  and 
decay,  and  darkness. 

It  was  the  afternoon  of  the  next  day  that  they 
had  it  out,  as  our  friend  irreverently  put  it,  about 
this  experience,  and  incidentally  about  another  prob 
lem  that  still  hung  over  their  minds.  They  had 
come  home  from  their  dinner  wearied  by  their 
walk  on  the  hard  pavements,  and  even  more  by  the 
monotony  and  sordidness  of  much  of  their  impres 
sions  —  despite  Madame's  —  but  with  the  sense  that 


1 86  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

they  had  not  got  at  the  thing  that  to  them  was  the 
thing  of  importance.  They  had  not  got  at  its 
significance. 

The  poet  was  the  first  to  break  out  once  they 
were  together  again.  He  launched  into  invectives 
against  what  he  called  our  modern  division  of  hap 
piness.  It  was  apparently  new  to  him.  How  he 
had  lived  his  forty  years  and  been  oblivious  to  so 
much  that  lay  just  beyond  his  elbow  he  could  not 
have  said.  The  truth  was  he  had  seen  it  with  his 
eyes,  had  read  of  it  in  the  daily  and  monthly  prints, 
but  never  before  had  had  it  brought  home  to  him 
with  the  full  force  of  its  yesterday's  attack  upon 
his  sensibilities.  And  he  was  still  bewildered  about 
it. 

"Poverty,"  he  mused.  "I  was  born  in  a  poor 
family,  but  it  was  a  dry  poverty  — scant  meals, 
scant  clothes,  and  a  fierce  pride.  It  was  not  like 
this  —  loose,  relaxed,  rotting.  This  is  horrible." 

"What  can  we  do?"  our  friend  asked,  sadly 
enough.  It  was  his  old  problem;  he  had  never 
found  the  idea  that  should  thrust  it  aside. 

They  sat  in  silence  for  a  while. 

"If  I  were  one  of  those  we  rubbed  elbows  with  on 
the  street  last  night,"  the  poet  broke  out  at  last, 
"I  should  have  my  fling  at  the  fine  delicate  structure 
I  was  groaning  at  the  base  of.  I  should  have 
nothing  to  lose,  and  to-day  I  can't  quite  justify 
myself  for  playing  safe  where  I  am.  It's  as  though 
I  were  sitting  tight  just  because  I  do  have  something 
to  lose." 

Our  friend  smiled,  without  amusement.  He 
caught,  in  the  crude  terms  of  this  outburst,  the  force 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  187 

of  its  first  attack  before  the  sad  complexity  of  the 
problem  had  come  home.  It  was  the  point  at  which 
the  new  school  of  generous  young  radicals  impo- 
tently  stopped. 

"You've  never  felt  so  before?"  he  asked. 

"Not  just  in  this  way.  And  I  can't  believe  that 
you  are  going  to  say  that  I'll  grow  hardened  and 
sink  back." 

"I  dare  say  that  you  will.  But  that  isn't  just 
what  I  was  going  to  say.  I  was  going  to  wonder  how 
you  have  escaped  so  long.  For  now,  clearly,  alas, 
you  too  have  been  caught." 

"I  don't  understand  you/'  the  poet  puzzled.  "It's 
as  though  you  had  suddenly  turned  up  hard.  I 
don't  want  you  soft,  you  understand,  but  I  don't 
want  to  quit  until  I  see  that  you  aren't  quite  cruel." 

"Ah,  we  shan't  quit.  It's  just  that  that's  impos 
sible.  The  thing  is  how  you  have  kept  from  be 
ginning  until  now." 

"I've  been,  I  suppose,  in  an  ivory  tower." 

"I  dare  say,  for  the  shock  you've  just  had  is  the 
thing  that's  been  shaking  us  for  a  score  of  years. 
I  don't  quite  know  how  to  put  it.  It  has  a  thousand 
aspects.  The  one  that  strikes  me  now  is  this.  Every 
age  has  its  own  way  of  feeling  the  raw  edge  of  life, 
and  this  is  our  way.  It's  a  matter  of  reactions. 
When  tyranny's  the  thing  the  poets  climb  down 
and  are  shocked  and  join  the  revolution.  There's 
the  Eighteenth  Century  in  France.  When  it's 
hardened  tradition  and  sophistication,  when  con 
vention,  title,  and  rank  are  in  the  saddle,  it's  neg 
lected  individuality  and  merit  that  cry  out. 
There's  the  Eighteenth  Century  in  England.  And 


1 88  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

now  wealth's  the  thing,  and  poverty  fills  us  with 
horror." 

"And  you,  because  you  can  sit  aloof  and  see  it 
as  one  of  an  eternal  series  of  revolts  against  evil,  is 
it  to  seem  to  you,  therefore,  the  less  important? 
Is  it  the  point  of  learning  that  it  takes  away  faith 
and  hope?" 

"I  know  that  it  must  seem  so  —  not  to  you;  you 
are  merely  putting  the  case  —  but  to  those  others 
who  are  so  kindly  eager  to  set  it  right  sweepingly, 
in  the  large.  In  a  sense  they  are  right.  It  does 
make  one  a  little  harder  hearted  —  not  about  the 
particular  case,  but  about  the  general  case." 

The  poet  knew,  through  many  bitter  complaints, 
that  his  friend  was  liberal  in  his  charities  both  with 
time  and  money.  The  complaints  came  from  char 
acteristic  sources,  and  were  to  the  effect  that  he  de 
moralized,  in  his  own  degree,  the  current  efforts  to 
deal  from  above  with  the  problem  of  poverty,  pre 
ferring  to  gratify  a  kindly  conscience  rather  than 
to  be  a  good  citizen. 

"Is  it  a  case  for  hard-hear tedness  at  all?"  the 
poet  asked,  hypothetically;  for  knowing  his  friend, 
the  question,  as  he  saw,  was  personally  absurd. 

"For  cool-headedness,"  the  other  returned  ab 
ruptly,  "which  goes  for  the  same  thing  with  many 
of  those  we  are  talking  about.  The  thing  isn't  so 
simple  as  they,  in  their  immediate  sympathies,  are 
in  the  way  of  feeling.  They  go  at  poverty  itself  — 
as  though  that  in  itself  were  the  evil!  It  is  evil 
enough,  heaven  knows,  but  it's  not  the  evil." 

"So  I  should  have  said,  till  we  had  our  sight  of  it 
yesterday.  Since  then  I  haven't  been  so  certain. 
It  was  horrible." 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  189 

"Not  that  it  wasn't  horrible,  but  that  poverty 
wasn't  the  cause,"  his  friend  added. 

"Why  not?  It  breeds  there,  and  the  brood  grows. 
What  but  poverty  keeps  them  there?" 

They  sat  for  a  moment  looking  out  of  the  window. 

"There  was  Madame,"  our  friend  put  at  last. 

"Ah!"  The  poet's  eyes  swept  round  with  a  new 
and  sudden  light  in  them. 

The  point  was  prolific  between  them  in  the  silence 
that  followed.  It  came  to  them  without  stint  that 
there  was  Madame. 

"Nothing  by  way  of  relief  of  poverty  could  have 
done  it,"  our  friend  considered. 

The  fact  was  before  them.  It  sent  itself  crashing 
through  a  good  deal  of  the  flimsy  structure  of  cur 
rent  humanitarianism  around  them.  And  after  they 
had  looked  among  the  wreckage  with  compunction 
for  the  spiritual  life  the  structure  was  thought  to 
have  housed,  they  turned  away.  They  had  sym 
pathy  for  the  ardor  they  saw  housed  there;  they 
acknowledged  that  often  there  was  generosity  in  it 
to  the  degree  of  nobility.  But  what,  for  the  two  of 
them  as  they  looked  into  the  ruins,  had  been  re 
vealed,  was  that  the  worship  going  on  there  was, 
simply,  not  spiritual. 

"You  count  sympathy  as  nothing,  then,  and 
service?"  the  poet  asked,  the  halo  of  the  current 
terms  still  lingering  in  his  vision.  "I  should  have 
called  them  spiritual." 

The  other  looked  at  him  with  the  amused  smile 
that  won  him  the  repute  of  hardness. 

"Until  you  had  begun  to  think,"  he  returned. 
"The  trouble  with  the  humanitarian  shop  is  that 


190  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

there  is  so  little  thinking  in  it.  When  you  had  begun 
to  think  you  would  have  seen  at  once  that  sympathy 
was  a  good  only  when  it  was  for  a  good  thing,  and 
service  was  a  good  only  when  it  was  for  a  good  thing. 
But  whether  they  minister  to  the  life  of  the  spirit  or 
minister  to  chaos  —  that  is  the  question.  And  the 
humanitarians  have,  by  and  large,  simply  stopped 
short  of  thinking  out  that  question.  They  have 
stopped  short  of  first  thinking  out  the  life  of  the 
spirit  —  the  real  thing  —  the  thing  itself." 

"Of  which  sympathy  and  service  may  be  a  part, 
though." 

"Ah,  a  tremendous  part.  Because  there  at  last 
they  are  in  their  own  natural  homes.  They  sweeten 
life  there,  and  give  it  warmth  and  kindness,  socialize 
it,  make  it  spread  outward.  They  humanize  it.  Do 
I  talk  sentimentally?" 

"But  as  to  Madame?" 

"What  the  humanitarians  so  egregiously  don't 
rise  to,"  commented  our  friend,  "is  just  that  the 
thing  that  carried  Madame  through  was  spiritual." 

"We've  got  to  face  the  fact,"  amended  the  poet, 
"that  she  also  had  her  exquisite  cooking." 

"Which  left  her  still  on  the  spot  —  that  spot." 

They  hung  upon  that  for  a  moment. 

"What  isn't  so  easy  to  see,"  resumed  the  poet  at 
last,  "is  how,  if  you  were  put  to  it,  you  could  get 
those  others  there  to  take  up  with  the  qualities  that 
have  redeemed  Madame  —  the  spiritual  ones." 

"Clearly  not  by  putting  at  the  bottom  of  our  creed 
and  theirs  that  the  great  difficulty  was  the  lack  of 
funds.  There  were  many  times  Madame's  funds  in 
the  horrible  place  next  door." 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  191 

"But  not  the  cooking." 

"You  come  back  to  that.  Well,  the  cooking  was 
spiritual." 

After  they  had  had  their  smile  our  friend  took  up 
the  point  from  where  he  had  put  it. 

"I  mean  spiritual,"  he  continued.  "There  was  an 
idea  in  it,  a  conception  of  the  thing  that  was  good, 
a  persistence  in  it  because  it  was  the  thing  that  was 
good.  It  was  a  job  well  done  —  kept  up,  mother  to 
daughter,  for  a  score  of  years,  and  against  what 
discouragements!  There  was  the  dining  room,  un 
speakably  bare  and  poor,  and  beautiful.  They 
stuck  to  a  virtue  that  was  in  them." 

"But  they  had  the  virtue.  How  about  those 
others?  What  virtue  had  they?" 

"Ah,  there  we  are,"  said  our  friend,  with  the  glow 
of  finality. 

The  younger  man,  still  fresh  from  his  new  emo 
tions,  looked  up  puzzled. 

"And  yet  I  don't  see  just  where." 

"Somewhere  near  the  center.  I  mean  that  there's 
the  great  task  —  what's  waiting  to  be  created  —  the 
ideas  —  the  current  sense  of  the  thing  that's  above 
all  worth  doing  —  the  thing  Madame  had  in  her, 
and  the  things  that  that  can  stand  as  a  type  of. 
You  see  what  I  mean.  Humanitarianism  misses  her; 
it  is  so  hopelessly  economic.  The  present  sense  of 
things  misses  her;  it  is  so  hopelessly  economic." 

He  paused  a  moment,  and  his  eye  lit  up  with 
raillery  at  the  vein  he  must  seem  to  have  fallen  into. 

"I  see  that  I'm  on  the  verge  of  cant,"  he  laughed, 
"railing  at  economics  because  it  is  materialistic. 
Economics  isn't  deplorable  because  it's  materialistic. 


192  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

We're  all  of  us,  God  help  us,  materialistic.  It's  de 
plorable  because  it  doesn't  attack  the  problem.  If 
we  get  out  of  the  muddle  we're  in,  it  will  be  because 
we  have  found  the  solution  elsewhere.  And  that 
is  why  Madame's  seems  to  me  so  significant.  For 
Madame's  there  in  the  midst  of  that  sick  spot  has 
solved  the  problem.  And  the  Palace  hasn't;  it  has 
helped  to  create  it,  for  all  its  funds.  Madame  had  — 
how  shall  I  say  it?  —  an  idea,  a  conception,  taste, 
and  something  that  made  her  cling  to  it  —  even 
there." 

They  pondered  the  point  for  a  moment. 

"I  see,"  the  poet  said  at  last.     "And  yet  — " 

"And  yet,"  the  other  repeated  with  old-time  fire, 
for  he  had  given  a  dying  cadence  to  his  last  words. 

"And  yet,"  the  poet  persisted,  "the  task  you  point 
out,  the  spread  of  right  conceptions,  ideas,  tastes, 
is  slow.  Meantime  —  " 

"Ah,  meantime,"  he  began,  and  then  with  a  re 
turn  upon  himself,  and  the  old  irony  that  had  made 
him  so  many  enemies  among  those  who  could  not 
understand  him,  "meantime  let  us  sit  aloof  and  rail 
at  the  age.  And  when  we  have  done  with  railing, 
and  have  looked  out  with  purged  eyes  on  the  world, 
I  dare  say  we  shall  realize  that  the  struggle  is  eternal 
and  the  problem  never  to  be  solved.  Perhaps  that 
is  a  happy  thing.  Utopia  would  be  an  intolerable 
place.  But  here  taste,  and  intelligence,  and  char 
acter  have  a  chance  to  keep  fit  in  the  struggle.  For 
the  struggle  is  the  thing." 

They  were  not  quite  done  with  Madame's. 
Summer  had  given  way  to  fall  when  one  afternoon 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  193 

they  resumed  their  dropped  thread,  as  though,  sym 
bolically,  as  the  poet  would  once  have  said,  their 
intellects  were  reviving  with  the  dying  of  nature. 
Their  depression  at  the  contact  of  poverty  was  long 
past,  and  other  interests  that  for  a  time  had  hung 
in  abeyance  had  come  forward  again,  and  had 
claimed  and  been  given  an  open  welcome.  The  re 
turn  was  naive  and  unconscious  on  the  part  of  the 
poet,  but  the  older  man  recognized  it  as  that  process 
of  hardening  that  he  had  predicted,  and  that  had 
seemed  at  the  time  a  suggestion  of  his  aloof  cyn 
icism.  He  could  understand  how  to  some  it  might 
seem  so,  but  with  his  friend  he  would  not  have  had 
it  other  than  it  was.  It  was  a  recovery  of  perspec 
tive.  And  he  preferred  a  poet  with  a  perspective  to 
one  addition  among  the  humanitarians. 

How  far  the  poet  had  reverted,  indeed,  was  shown 
in  the  fact  that  he  returned  to  Madame,  but  took 
her  up,  not  on  the  side  of  her  relation  to  poverty, 
but  —  by  what  at  first  seemed  an  invisible  thread  — 
on  the  side  of  her  relation  to  the  arts. 

"With  your  scorn  of  the  arts,"  he  said,  leaping 
to  the  subject  from  two  or  three  removes,  "you  one 
day  used  a  phrase  that  struck  me  —  amazed  me." 

The  other  looked  his  inquiry. 

"You  spoke  of  Madame's  taste." 

"Ah,  she  had  taste." 

"You  put  it  first  —  at  the  bottom." 

"Well?" 

"Haven't  you  rather  surrendered?" 

The  other  looked  up  with  the  kindling  eye  of  his 
awakened  interest. 

"At  discretion,"  he  smiled.  "I  fancy  we  have 
come  to  an  understanding." 


194  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"On  the  contrary,"  the  poet  protested,  "what  so 
clearly  stands  out  to  me  is  just  that  I  at  least 
haven't.  As  for  you,  you  never  doubt.  But  I  — 
your  sudden  words  about  Madame's  taste  swept  me 
back  to  my  own  position  when  I  thought  I  had  given 
it  up.  And  there  I  am  now." 

His  friend  smiled.  That  he  never  doubted  was 
a  note  that  had  come  to  him  before,  and  it  dis 
turbed  and  amused  him.  He  had  doubted  almost 
everything,  and  perhaps  most  of  all  himself.  But 
he  took  his  ideas  hard,  perhaps  because  he  had 
come  to  none  of  them  without  winning  to  them 
through  a  sea  of  doubts. 

Friends  of  his  spoke  of  his  course  as  paralleling 
the  miser's.  But  he  pointed  out  the  liberality  with 
which  he  showered  his  opinions  upon  them,  and 
they  joined  his  laugh  and  withdrew  their  point. 
They  had  the  amused  recollection  of  long  winter 
afternoons  and  longer  nights  spent  with  him  by  his 
fireside,  where  nothing  had  drawn  them  but  that 
liberality.  They  had  disagreed  with  him  freely,  and 
sometimes  been  angered,  or  even  wearied,  but  they 
had  always  come  back.  He  had  created  a  place 
among  them,  and  they  resorted  to  him,  finding  there 
something  that  they  could  find  nowhere  else.  Once 
over  his  hospitable  threshold  they  came  into  an 
atmosphere  that  serenified  even  their  most  stormy 
clashes.  When  they  crossed  it  they  left  behind  them 
a  good  deal  of  the  world,  for  all  the  vestiges  of 
Havana  and  Xeres  that  greeted  them  there,  and 
stepped  into  the  presence  of  many  things  that  were 
large,  and  calm,  and  permanent. 
In  another  sense,  however,  the  parallel  of  the 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  195 

miser  was  happier.  For  as  he  grew  older  he  grew 
more  and  more  centered  in  his  one  pursuit,  and 
though  he  went  about  more,  and  consorted  more 
with  his  friends,  he  let  the  militant  causes  of  the 
moment  more  and  more  alone.  He  liked  ideas  for 
their  own  sakes;  and  if  he  never  lost  his  sense  that 
life  was  a  matter  of  living,  and  that  ideas  got  their 
quick  vitality  and  their  human  importance  from 
their  contact  with  reality,  still  they  grew  for  him 
increasingly  real  in  and  for  themselves.  They  were 
his  real  estate,  he  used  to  pun.  And  when  he  looked 
about  him  at  the  things  that  most  other  men 
struggled  for,  and  got  praise  from  the  arbiters  of 
the  age  for  struggling  for,  they  seemed  as  tolerable 
prey  as  any.  To  him,  naturally,  they  seemed  in 
comparably  the  best. 

More  than  one  of  his  critics  —  for  he  had  by 
now  a  book  or  two  to  his  credit  —  to  his  debit,  alas, 
he  admitted  —  had  smiled  at  this  passion  of  his, 
perceiving  that  for  all  his  devotion  he  had  somehow 
missed  the  note  of  originality.  They  were  right,  but 
they  missed  the  point.  For  what  he  was  after,  as 
he  himself  knew  when  he  looked  back  on  his  own 
long  quest,  was  not  the  invention  of  new  ideas.  He 
had  indeed  the  humor  to  doubt  his  prowess  in  that 
matter,  and  to  blush  inwardly  at  the  supposition 
that  he  had  been  all  along  the  champion  of  his  own 
genius.  What  he  was  after  was  not  novelty,  but 
truth. 

There  was  something  about  that  very  attitude, 
it  was  true,  that  in  a  forgetful  age  might  of  itself 
pass  for  originality.  It  was  rare  enough.  But  his 
own  value  for  it,  characteristically,  was  just  that  it 


196  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

was  not  new- —  it  had  been  the  attitude  of  the  men 
he  liked  best  on  the  shelves  around  him.  And  if 
almost  all  of  them  were  on  the  shelf,  and  almost 
none  of  them  among  the  lively  intellects  of  his  time, 
still  there  he  was  with  his  passion  for  ideas  of  that 
kind.  It  was  his  own  passion. 

It  was  for  that  reason,  no  doubt,  that  other  men 
of  ideas  more  original  than  his  should  find  some 
thing  restful  in  his  company,  and  in  the  equilibrium 
that  even  their  disagreements  by  his  fireside  tended 
to  make  for.  They  came  away  sometimes  discon 
tent  in  the  suspicion  that  their  own  originality 
was  often  a  hole  and  corner  affair,  and  they  liked 
him  for  the  moment  none  the  better  for  that.  But 
in  time  the  suspicion  that  their  science,  or  their 
aesthetics,  or  their  humanitarianism,  or  their  scholar 
ship  was  not,  after  all,  all  that  there  was  to  be  said 
about  life,  sent  them  back  again  reluctantly.  They 
hated  robustly  to  give  up  the  importance  of  hole 
and  corner,  but  they  were,  first  of  all,  intelligent, 
and  they  did  come  back. 

None  of  them,  perhaps,  so  often  as  the  poet.  He 
had  a  freer  play  of  mind,  and  a  more  susceptible 
spirit,  and  he  valued  more  than  most  of  them  the 
peculiar  thing  that  he  got  from  that  contact.  When 
now  he  put  his  question  about  Madame's  taste  he 
was  not  only  genuinely  touched  by  the  problem, 
but  he  had  a  lurking,  affectionate  malice,  and  he 
liked  to  watch  the  whole  apparatus  of  his  friend's 
mind  in  motion  to  dispose  of  an  atom. 

The  disconcerting  charm  of  that  mind,  however, 
was  its  consciousness  of  its  own  humors.  Its  owner 
now  looked  at  the  younger  man  thoughtfully,  settled 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  197 

himself  into  his  great  chair,  and  then,  catching  the 
gleam  at  the  back  of  the  poet's  eye,  narrowed  his 
own  into  a  smile. 

"Have  you  hardened  —  you?"  he  asked. 

The  other  sobered.  He  caught  the  echo  of  his 
own  old  phrase. 

"I've  been  thinking  — "  he  began,  and  then 
stopped  at  the  amusement  in  the  glance  that  con 
fronted  him.  He  caught  in  it  suddenly  a  point  that 
put  them  a  long  way  forward  in  their  journey. 

"Ah,  you  are  generous,"  he  said.  "You  catch  me 
home.  But  if  I  do  acknowledge  that  there  is  where 
reason  comes  in,  still  —  " 

It  came  over  him  in  higher  and  higher  waves, 
under  the  other's  gaze,  that  there  was  where  the 
reason  did  come  in.  He  waited  for  a  moment  strug 
gling  to  emerge  and  get  his  normal  breath. 

"There  is  where  the  reason  comes  in!"  he  ex 
claimed  again.  Then  catching  the  malice  in  the 
other's  smile  he  hurried  on.  "Say  that  I  have  saved 
myself  from  going  over  body  and  soul  to  the  hu 
manitarians  by  thinking  it  out,  by  what  you  call 
the  reason  —  I  see  the  point;  I  come  to  it.  But  it 
was  agreed  between  us,  wasn't  it,  that  at  the  bottom, 
giving  the  first  bent  to  our  sense  of  what  was  good, 
was  a  set  of  primal  tendencies,  preferences  —  love 
of  justice,  love  of  beauty,  religious  aspiration  and 
many  others  —  and  that  reason  came  in  afterward 
and  judged,  adjusted,  umpired,  proportioned  be 
tween  them  —  did  something  of  that  nature  —  but 
that  the  first  direction  was  given  by  the  other  thing, 
the  primal  aspiration.  And  here  you  have  granted 
just  that  arrangement  by  putting  Madame's  taste  at 


198  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

the  bottom  of  her  virtue.  She  wanted  her  kind  of 
thing  and  not  the  Palace  kind  of  thing,  and  she  stuck 
to  her  kind  of  thing  against  all  the  odds,  and  solved 
the  problem  in  the  end." 

"Your  sketch  is  fair." 

"And  I  am  thrown  back  upon  my  old  position." 

"That  salvation  is  an  aesthetic  matter?" 

"Just  so,  and  in  practice  is  to  come  through  the 
arts." 

The  older  man  sat  for  a  time  in  thought.  His 
friend  studied  the  thoughtful  face  before  him. 
What  welled  up  in  it  before  long  was  a  kindling 
look  of  amused  intention. 

"Will  you  go  on  a  quest?"  he  asked. 

The  poet  nodded.  He  knew  those  reflective  urban 
adventures  of  his  host.  For  the  most  part  they 
were  undertaken  alone,  but  he  had  sometimes  been 
admitted  to  a  share  in  them,  as  but  now  at 
Madame's.  Or  was  it  that  when  his  friend  went 
with  him  his  pleasures  became  reflective  adven 
tures?  At  all  events  he  knew  how  the  ordinary  set 
pleasures  of  the  city  looked  pale  and  tasted  flat 
after  them,  not  from  any  austere  disapproval  arising 
from  the  stern  spectacle  that  often  they  had  to  con 
template,  but  rather  from  the  richer  pleasure  of  the 
adventures  themselves.  Their  comedy  was  real; 
it  was  organic;  it  enriched  the  very  life  they  were 
leading.  An  hour's  browsing  in  some  second-hand 
book  shop,  half  reading,  half  catching  beyond  the 
edge  of  the  book  the  dusty  life  of  the  place,  and  its 
dusty  owner,  and  its  dusty  frequenters,  left  him 
deeper  memories  than  most  pleasures  could  leave. 
Once  they  had  sat  out  a  gloomy  afternoon  in  the 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  199 

workshop  of  a  solitary  bookbinder,  and  listened, 
while  the  deft  fingers  performed  the  most  delicate 
tooling,  to  a  Rabelaisian  flow  of  coarse  humor  and 
honest  wit.  And  the  books  that  came  from  that 
bindery  had  thereafter  another  flavor. 

Their  present  adventure  was  to  be  of  a  different 
kind,  but  still  it  was  to  have  the  stamp  of  belonging 
to  the  life  they  were  leading.  The  poet,  remotely 
at  first,  was  beginning  to  catch  the  savor  of  this 
love  of  the  organic,  this  passion  for  weaving  the 
parts  of  his  daily  life  into  a  broad  pattern,  and  this 
tying  in  of  loose  threads.  The  old  glitter  of  dis 
connected  change  and  variety  lost,  for  moments, 
its  charm.  At  times  he  laid  it  reluctantly  to  the 
recession  of  his  youth  —  and  perhaps  it  was  age 
that  was  changing  him.  But  at  other  times  he 
could  wish  that  his  youth  itself  had  squandered 
itself  less  in  disconnected  change  and  variety  — 
had  built  itself  in  more  structurally.  And  in  such 
moods  he  lent  himself  more  reliantly  to  his  older 
companion,  who,  in  revenge,  never  seemed  to  him 
old,  but  rather  to  have  kept  a  quiet  zest  of  youth 
about  him. 

He  sat  now  with  the  smile  of  anticipation  in  his 
eye. 

"All  we  shall  need  in  our  scrip,"  he  said,  "is  a 
single  curiosity.  If  it  was  taste  that  Madame 
started  with,  had  it  any  relation  to  art?" 

"Where  shall  you  take  me?" 

"Into  the  most  curious  places  in  the  world." 

It  was  autumn  and  the  season  was  on.  Ex 
hibits  were  opened,  concerts  and  operas  were  be 
ginning,  coteries  were  eager  with  the  summer's 


2oo  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

arrears  of  novelties.  A  new  Russian  dancer  was 
being  widely  announced.  Two  Russian  novelists 
had  just  been  translated.  From  France  came  word 
of  a  revolutionary  school  of  painting.  A  colossal 
symphony  was  to  come  from  Vienna  interpreting 
the  gist  of  Nietzsche's  philosophy.  The  great  uni 
versities  were  announcing  the  growth  of  amateur 
play-acting,  amateur  story-writing,  and  aesthetic 
dancing,  in  place  of  intellectual  studies.  Vers  libre 
was  bringing  in  a  wholly  new  group  of  poets.  The 
season  indeed  promised  to  be  lively  in  aesthetic 
circles. 

The  two  friends  set  out.  They  missed  nothing. 
Their  experiences  accumulated.  Before  the  end  of 
the  autumn  something  began  to  emerge  —  it  was 
the  comedy  of  their  pursuit.  They  admitted  that 
if  it  had  not  emerged  they  would  have  had  to  de 
sist  before  they  came  to  the  point.  They  saw 
indeed  much  that  was  good;  some  things  that  were 
noble.  But  their  concern  was  not  primarily  with 
objects  of  art;  it  was  with  the  human  spectacle. 
And  the  human  spectacle  in  those  purlieus  repaid 
them. 

The  poet  developed  a  new  note  in  his  laughter. 
It  crept  in  first  one  night  as  he  saw  the  solemnity 
with  which  two  avid-eyed  young  poets  watched  the 
lithe,  slim  body  of  the  Russian  dancer,  and  took 
what  went  on  inside  them  for  their  souls.  A  kind 
of  sickness  had  already  mingled  with  his  laugh  at 
their  murmured  confidences;  it  was  with  horror 
that  he  heard  them,  in  fervid  tones,  quote  a  couplet 
of  his  own: 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  201 

Oh,  dusty,  impure  question  —  Is  she  pure? 
It  is  enough  that  she  is  beautiful. 

When  he  dared  he  stole  a  look  at  his  companion; 
he  hoped  that  the  murmurs  had  passed  him  un 
heard,  or  the  lines  been  unrecognized.  But  he 
could  glean  nothing  from  the  serene  countenance 
by  his  side. 

Surreptitiously  one  day  he  looked  into  the  two 
Russian  novelists.  Something  had  come  over  him; 
they  had  the  Russian  quality,  but  they  amused 
him.  Once  that  Russian  poignancy  had  set  up  a 
great  tumult  in  his  emotions,  and  like  the  two  poets 
in  the  balcony,  he  had  used  to  discover  soul  in  that 
tumult.  This  time  as  he  read  he  seemed  to  catch 
the  secret  of  it.  Multitudinous,  formless,  stormy, 
hopeless,  they  saw  life  with  their  keen,  barbaric 
senses  and  nothing  more.  Their  stuff  was  not  or 
dered,  intellectualized.  It  meant  nothing;  and 
they  could  make  nothing  of  it.  It  was  a  welter. 

In  his  own  poetry,  following  the  great  tradition, 
he  knew  that  his  pain  and  labor  had  been,  for  all 
his  vacuous  protest,  to  make  intelligible,  to  in 
terpret.  Even  in  the  couplet  that  he  groaned  to 
remember  he  had  tried  to  reinterpret  the  significance 
of  beauty.  He  might  like  to  blot  those  particular 
lines  —  would  give  a  good  deal  to  just  now  —  but 
their  intention  had  been  a  significant  intention. 
These  somber  minds,  however,  understood  nothing, 
put  nothing  in  order,  tried  to  put  nothing  in  order, 
gloried  in  their  tumultuous  disarray.  They 
rendered  up  the  chaos,  not  because  they  understood 


2O2  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

it,  but  because  it  was  there.  They  lugged  it  out, 
not  to  say  something  true  about  it,  but  to  heap  it 
up  and  gloom  around  in  their  hopeless  helplessness 
before  it. 

He  smiled  as  he  welcomed  the  sudden  release 
from  his  old  obsession.  He  felt  in  himself  a  sudden 
peace  in  the  clarity  of  his  understanding.  And  he 
smiled  again,  partly  at  himself,  and  partly  at  the 
simplicity  of  the  perception  —  that  peace  came 
just  from  the  escape  from  chaos,  just  from  the  un 
derstanding,  the  putting  things  in  order.  He 
caught,  consciously  for  the  first  time,  the  point  of 
literature. 

He  had  not  thought  it  all  out  before  a  new  ex 
perience  sent  the  two  friends  wandering  through 
the  streets  in  comfortable  release  from  an  evening 
of  local  chaos  of  their  own.  They  had  gone  to 
gether  to  a  dinner  at  an  artistic  and  literary  house. 
They  had  been  charmed  by  the  simple  beauty  of 
the  interior,  the  costumes  of  the  ladies,  the  appoint 
ments  of  linen  and  crystal  and  silver  of  the  dining 
room,  the  rich  draperies  and  pictures  and  rugs  of 
the  drawing  room.  At  dinner  the  talk  had  begun. 
The  poet  felt  uncomfortable.  The  Russian  novel 
ists,  the  colossal  symphony  interpreting  Nietzsche, 
the  cubists,  the  futurists,  vers  libre,  went  into  the 
crucible  of  talk  and  came  out  glowing.  Strauss's 
"wrangling  inharmonies,"  Matisse's  "tremendous 
barbarities,"  futurist  "mysteries"  fell  from  cul 
tured  lips  without  the  smile  of  judgment.  They 
were  the  "movement  of  art." 

There  was  the  charm  of  exclamation,  of  en 
thusiasm,  of  bandied  allusion,  of  soft  lights,  of 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  203 

modulated  voices,  of  the  near  presence  of  an  au 
thor  and  a  sculptor.  But  the  poet  was  un 
comfortable.  He  suddenly  saw  it  from  the  out 
side.  He  saw  it  with  his  understanding.  For  a 
moment  he  could  regret  the  brightly  colored  land 
of  illusion  and  irresponsibility  he  was  leaving.  It 
was  endeared  by  so  nearly  everything  that  endears. 
And  he  was  quitting  it  for  a  drab  land  of  disillu 
sionment  and  responsibility.  He  wondered  for  a 
moment  why  he  was  going.  Then  he  knew  that 
he  couldn't  help  it.  Back  of  his  senses  and  his 
delights  there  was  something  else  that  understood 
and  smiled.  And  that  something  else  was  he. 

What  supported  him  over  the  moment  of  regret 
was  the  shocking  recollection  that  it  was  just  in 
such  circles  as  these  that  all  the  horrors  of  the 
Russian  novelists,  and  frantic  French  decadence, 
and  German  unintelligibility  got  their  passport. 
Here  at  least  art  had  not  done  the  thing  that  he 
had  always  defended  it  for  doing.  It  had  not 
created  a  sure  taste  for  beauty  even  in  matters 
simply  artistic.  And  as  for  those  other,  wider 
values  of  taste  —  as  for  Madame's  .  .  . 

"It  isn't  beauty  we're  after  now,"  someone  was 
saying  near  him.  "We've  changed  all  that.  What 
we're  after  is  reality." 

He  had  heard  that  implicitly  said  a  hundred 
times  before;  now  he  listened  with  wonder.  He 
remembered  the  Russian  novelists  with  a  vengeance. 

Once  or  twice  in  the  course  of  the  evening  he 
caught  his  friend's  eye,  lonely,  observant,  reflective, 
amused.  He  himself  had  turned  away,  his  sensi 
tiveness  to  what  was  going  on  around  him 


204  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

heightened  to  the  point  of  pain.  Finally  he  hunted 
him  out,  and  when  they  decently  could  they 
departed. 

Once  on  the  moonlit  street  he  got  his  arm  under 
that  of  his  companion  and  turned  him  toward  one 
of  their  old  haunts  by  the  lake.  He  was  in  no 
mood  for  loneliness  or  sleep. 

It  was  an  Indian  summer  night,  crystal  above, 
and  a  thin  haze  among  the  tree-trunks  and  over 
the  meadows  of  the  park.  For  half  a  mile  they 
walked  in  silence.  Then  the  poet  laughed. 

"After  all,"  he  said,  "these  people  are  only  cari 
catures  of  the  real  thing." 

"The  air  is  better  here,"  his  friend  returned. 
After  a  moment,  pausing  by  the  wooded  edge  of 
a  lagoon,  he  asked,  "Are  those  Lombardy  poplars 
or  cypresses?"  and  waved  his  hand  toward  a  row 
of  slender  trees  that  shot  up  out  of  the  mist  into 
the  clear  moonlight  above. 

"I  don't  know;  they  are  beautiful." 

They  stood  a  moment  watching  them,  and  then 
passed  on. 

"Why  beautiful?"  the  older  man  mused. 

"I  don't  know.  Once  I  could  have  given  you 
mystic  reasons.  To-night  I  don't  know.  All  I  can 
say  is  that  they  are  beautiful." 

"Aesthetics,  then?" 

"It  seems  a  little  too  simple,  but  you  found  the 
trees  beautiful?" 

"Yes." 

"I  dare  say  most  men  would." 

"Well?" 

"Well,  perhaps  that  is  aesthetics." 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  205 

"You  are  humble  to-night." 

The  poet  laughed.  "I've  been  humbled,"  he 
said.  "I've  been  in  such  company  before  —  been 
part  of  it  —  and  now  I've  seen  it.  What  I  can't 
help  seeing  is  that  it's  just  the  people  brought  up 
on  art  that  are  wishing  on  us  all  these  things  that 
aren't  beautiful.  It  hasn't  given  them  taste." 

"Perhaps  those  things  are  beautiful  to  them." 

"If  they  are,  then  aesthetics  is  anything  —  and 
nothing  —  whatever  you  like." 

"That  is  what  you  have  just  said  about  the 
trees." 

"No.  When  I  spoke  I  was  thinking  about  men 
by  and  large,  to-day  and  yesterday  —  of  some 
thing  with  a  touch  of  universality  —  not  anything 
that  anybody  likes  at  any  time,  but  something  that 
lies  deeper,  is  more  fundamental  —  something 
based  on  their  common  sense  of  the  thing.  Do  I 
talk  cant?" 

"No.    But  you  go  in  a  circle." 

"Not  that  all  men  have  it,"  the  poet  spun  on, 
"or  even  most  men,  but  some  men." 

He  paused.  The  other  was  silent,  attentive;  in 
his  eye  was  a  gleam  of  appreciative  irony. 

"From  this  point  on  I  stumble,"  the  poet  con 
tinued,  a  touch  of  hopeless  humor  struggling  in  his 
voice.  "I  know  what  I  mean  by  beauty;  I  know 
what  I  think  is  beautiful.  I  know  that  I  fall  in 
with  certain  others,  love  what  they  love.  And  that 
is  what  I  praise.  Other  things  I  hate;  I  abhor 
Matisse.  Well,  I  dare  say  Matisse  hates  what  I 
love,  and  in  general  uses  my  own  language  to 
justify  himself  and  condemn  me,  mutatis  mutandis. 


206  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

Does  it  get  me  anywhere  to  say  that  the  best  taste 
is  that  which  refines  on  the  common  sense  of  beauty 
of  the  race.  At  least  it  indicates  a  standard  and 
a  direction.  It  isn't  quite  anarchy.  But  what  is 
clear  about  the  present  is  that  we  have  a  prodigious 
art  and  it  is  anarchic,  and  a  prodigious  aesthetic 
public  brought  up  on  it,  and  it  doesn't  make  for 
beauty." 

They  had  come  to  the  lake  shore  and  had  ad 
justed  themselves  on  a  bench.  The  moon  lay  shat 
tered  on  the  rough  water,  and  the  pebbles  grated 
with  the  rush  and  recession  of  the  waves  on  the 
sloping  beach  at  their  feet.  But  the  poet's  mind 
was  preoccupied.  Suddenly  he  looked  up. 

"I  have  said  that  now  for  the  third  time,"  he 
laughed.  "And  Madame,  I  begin  to  believe,  didn't 
belong  to  aesthetic  circles." 

They  hung  in  assent  upon  that  for  a  while,  and 
the  silence  and  the  warm  night,  and  the  wind  and 
the  waves  and  the  moonlight  were  glorious  about 
them. 

"But  the  real  thing,"  the  older  man  said  at  last, 
"  —  aren't  you  a  little  hard  on  the  real  thing?" 

"There's  something  to  be  said  for  that,"  the 
other  returned.  "I  get  a  glimpse  here,  now,  that 
I  don't  quite  catch  clearly.  It's  a  glimpse  of  art 
as  a  kind  of  final  product,  a  last  expression,  of 
whatever  taste  we  have,  —  a  kind  of  ultimate 
flower  —  " 

"Hence  the  fluttering  of  our  infinite  butterflies," 
the  older  man  threw  in. 

"Ah,"  the  other  smiled.  "And  perhaps  they 
have  their  use  in  spreading  the  pollen.  But  I  don't 
like  to  see  it  all  left  in  their  hands." 


In  Pursuit  of  the  Arts  207 

"Whose  then?" 

"There  we  are!"  the  poet  exclaimed.  "We  shall 
have  to  think  it  out." 

There  was  their  point.  They  laughed.  The 
poet  threw  in  one  more  phrase: 

"In  relation  to  all  the  other  things  they  so  egre- 
giously  don't  think  about  at  all." 

There  was  another  matter  that  had  dropped  by 
the  way,  and  the  older  man,  with  his  uneasiness  at 
the  consciousness  of  untied  threads,  reverted  to  it. 

"We  have  left  Madame  unexplained,"  he  said. 

"And  I  dare  say  we  shall,  even  in  the  end,"  the 
poet  replied,  "but  we've  rescued  her  from  the 
aestheticists." 

"And  ourselves.  But  there's  something  else.  I 
go  back  always  to  your  conception  of  the  soul. 
And  I  can't  help  thinking  that  if  Madame  had  had 
a  fish  shop  instead  of  her  restaurant  she  would 
still  have  solved  her  problem,  by  virtue  of  some 
thing  else  in  her  that  we  should  not  have  been 
tempted  to  call  aesthetic  —  a  satisfaction  to  some 
inner  demand  in  her  nature  —  some  other  prefer 
ence  of  her  soul  —  that  somehow  she  had  caught 
a  glimpse  of  and  fostered  until  she  would  have 
been  unhappy  to  thwart  it.  Whether  in  some 
transcendental  sense  you  wish  to  call  the  ultimate 
attractiveness  of  that  impulse  (Esthetic  — " 

"Ah,"  the  poet  interposed,  "but  with  that  range 
of  attractiveness  art  has  nothing  to  do.  You  involve 
us  with  Croce  and  the  decadent  philosophers." 

"And  there  we  are  at  last,"  his  friend  returned. 

As  they  wandered  homeward  through  the  dim 
park  our  friend  remembered  how  in  his  youth  an 


208  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

older  friend  of  his  had  said  words  that  had  clarified 
his  own  vision,  and  how  he  had  come  afterwards 
at  midnight  to  the  lake  shore  and  sat  on  the  bench 
they  had  but  now  quitted,  to  calm  and  adjust  his 
dizzy  thoughts.  And  now,  as  he  looked  at  the  poet, 
whose  friendly  arm  was  linked  in  his,  he  wondered 
hopefully  whether  he  himself  had  not  at  last,  and 
in  his  own  way,  handed  on  the  torch. 


PART    TWO 


POOR  RICHARD 

LONG  afterwards,  in  the  desultory  reading  of 
his  more  settled  years,  he  came  one  day 
upon  a  passage  that  set  him  in  pursuit  of  his  own 
childhood.  In  the  raucous  comedy  of  his  ado 
lescence,  in  the  later  years  of  his  sophomoric 
militancy,  and  in  the  unheroic  dullness  of  middle 
life,  that  childhood  had  never  for  long  failed  to 
come  flashing  back  upon  him  at  inexplicable 
moments,  from  unexpected  sensations  too  faint  to 
have  caught  for  themselves  his  reflective  attention. 
Yellow  sunlight  falling  through  trees  upon  a  wall; 
vague  odors  in  a  country  lane  of  a  summer  after 
noon;  the  luminous  blue  that  sometimes  whitens 
the  sky  at  the  horizon  on  a  windy  morning;  a 
moment's  harmony  of  thirds  in  voices  or  instru 
ments  at  random  windows  or  in  the  droning  tones 
of  street  organs  —  such  sensations,  without  reason 
of  exceptional  beauty  or  traceable  reminiscence 
brought  back  to  him  for  lingering  half  hours  the 
limpid  emotions  of  his  boyhood. 

At  such  moments,  so  affecting  were  the  contrasts 
with  the  grayer  tones  of  his  current  life  that  he 
clung  to  his  vision  with  eagerness,  with  a  romantic 
sense  that  there  was  something  infinitely  desirable 


210  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

in  the  innocence  and  purity  of  his  childhood's  out 
look.  He  had  seemed  of  late  to  be  losing,  through 
the  hardening  sophistication  of  time,  deep  and 
moving  and  intimate  values  that  thought  and 
knowledge  were  bringing  no  adequate  compensa 
tions  for.  His  more  normal  moments  tried  to  re 
assure  him;  but  he  mistrusted  his  more  normal 
moments,  knowing  that  they  knew  nothing  of  the 
magic  of  his  occasional  moments.  The  inner  con 
viction  of  reality  that  intensified  these  emotions 
never  haunted  his  hours  of  objective  thought. 

So  it  came  about  that  his  childhood  clung  to  his 
consciousness  with  a  persistence  that  he  did  nothing 
to  discourage;  and  though  as  the  years  went  on  the 
flashes  of  the  old  light  fell  less  and  less  frequently 
on  the  world  that  he  looked  out  upon,  he  still  had 
occasional  glimpses  of  it  to  thrill  him  and  darken 
the  moments  of  commonplace  return. 

It  was  with  curious  eyes,  therefore,  that  he  came 
one  day  upon  the  record  of  the  life  of  a  child  who 
had  died  at  "5  yeares  and  3  days  old  onely  ...  a 
prodigy  for  wit  and  understanding,"  and  whose 
story  had  come  down  over  a  gap  of  nearly  three 
centuries  because  the  father,  who  had  paused  over 
his  affairs  to  drop  a  tear  "of  grief  and  affliction," 
was  that  courtly  diarist  of  an  age  so  peculiarly  re 
mote  from  ours  —  John  Evelyn.  The  record  was 
the  more  moving  that  the  grief  with  which  the  few 
lines  were  penned  seemed  so  largely  irrelevant. 
The  pathos  to  modern  hearts  seemed  to  lie  not  so 
much  in  the  loss  of  what  the  father  mourned,  as 
in  the  thought  that  it  was  there  at  all  to  be  lost. 

For  "at  2  yeares  and  halfe  old  he  could  per- 


Poor  Richard  211 

fectly  reade  any  of  the  English,  Latine,  French,  or 
Gotic  letters,  pronouncing  the  three  first  lan 
guages  exactly.  He  had  before  the  5th  yeare,  or 
in  that  yeare  .  .  .  got  by  heart  almost  the  entire 
vocabularie  of  Latine  and  French  primitives  and 
words,  could  make  congruous  syntax,  turn  Latin 
into  English  and  vice  versa,  construe  and  prove 
what  he  read,  and  did  the  government  and  use  of 
relatives,  verbs,  substantives,  elipses,  and  many 
figures  and  tropes  —  made  considerable  progress 
in  Comenius's  Janua  .  .  .  and  had  a  strong  passion 
for  Greeke.  The  number  of  verses  he  could  re 
cite  was  prodigious,  and  what  he  remembered  of 
the  parts  of  playes.  He  understood  the  historical 
parts  of  the  Bible  and  New  Testament  to  a  wonder. 
He  was  far  from  childish  in  anything  he  said  or 
did." 

Poor  little  Richard,  "incomparable  hopeful 
blossome!" 

And  yet  the  reader  of  this  sad  record,  conscious 
of  a  childhood  of  his  own  so  unspeakably  different, 
and  wont  to  regret  the  loss  of  just  those  things  that 
had  made  it  so  different,  found  himself  out  of  all 
wont,  through  a  perverse  habit  of  mind,  looking 
back  at  his  own  so  much  happier  case  with  no 
little  doubts. 

It  had  indeed  been  a  childhood  rich  in  the  things 
that  are  thought  of  as  peculiar  to  childhood.  The 
little  town  in  which  he  had  been  born  was  spread 
out  upon  long  hills  in  a  country  half  forested  and 
half  tilled,  broken  into  small  woods  and  fields  like 
the  background  of  an  old  print.  He  could  see 
from  the  hilltop  of  his  own  world  a  broad  shallow 


212  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

valley  and  hills  beyond,  blocked  with  color  and  set 
with  the  half-hidden  gleaming  white  houses  pe 
culiar  to  that  countryside.  He  remembered  it 
always  in  the  high  colors  of  spring  and  fall,  and 
always  in  sunshine. 

The  town  itself  —  to  him  big,  menacing,  al 
luring,  to  be  invaded  for  short  distances,  and  to  be 
fled  from  in  terror  till  the  click  of  the  gate  shut 
it  out  behind  him  —  lay  beneath  his  hilltop  in 
clear  and  bright  hues.  Its  cobblestones,  swept 
and  garnished,  its  tall  spires,  its  crowding  trees, 
made  up  a  magic  region  seen  from  within  the  gate, 
prolific  of  benevolent  peddlers  whose  great  carts 
at  a  gesture  sprang  open  to  reveal  sesamic  treasures 
exchangeable  for  worthless  heaps  of  rags  and 
papers;  of  strange  terrifying  dogs  of  another  race 
than  the  kindly  and  understanding  mongrel  of  his 
own  world;  of  damp  and  jocularly  clad  fishmongers 
whose  stirring  horns  summoned  a  wrappered  and 
capped  population  to  morning  gossip  at  the  gutter; 
of  rare  organ  grinders  whose  droning  pipes,  nearing 
and  retreating,  fused  with  the  lazy  colors  of  the 
afternoon. 

Behind  the  walls  of  his  own  world  his  most 
bizarre  relationships  were  with  trees.  Touches  of 
human  expression  in  them  caught  in  him  quick 
responses.  There  was  a  dwarfed  oak  whose  an 
gularity  was  touched  with  pathos  by  a  friendly, 
deprecating  way  it  had  of  holding  out  its  large, 
frank  leaves;  a  dandified  maple  that  cradled  long 
his  ambitions  and  at  last  his  scratched  and 
trembling  body;  an  eccentric,  reserved  russet 
apple  tree  that  stood  aloof  from  the  common  ram- 


Poor  Richard  213 

bows  and  guarded  the  stable  door.  If  such  in 
terpretations  were  childish  he  was  indeed  a  child, 
and  long  custom  gave  to  them  a  kind  of  reasonable 
ness  that  he  had  no  wish  to  refute. 

There  was  something  less  explicable  but  more 
moving  in  the  sharp  impressiveness  of  a  deep  and 
gloomy  grove  that  lay  beyond  the  cobblestones 
across  the  way.  In  the  morning  when  a  low  sun 
fell  upon  its  front  it  held  only  such  terrors  as  might 
with  high  courage  be  defied  to  the  edge  of  the 
shadows.  He  remembered  one  such  adventure 
when  he  had  fought  off  his  fear  even  beyond  the 
sunlight,  and  though  he  had  failed  at  the  last 
moment  to  bring  off  the  precious  buckeye  that  had 
lured  him  so  far  —  for  terror  seized  him  while  his 
fingers  were  still  short  of  the  prize  —  his  experience 
served  to  rationalize  the  situation  for  his  future 
guidance.  Thereafter  of  a  morning  he  could  walk 
without  fear  to  the  edge  of  the  dense  shade,  know 
ing  that  fear  was  powerless  to  come  upon  him 
across  the  barrier.  And  if  he  taunted  it  with  its 
impotence  as  he  strutted  up  and  down  the  irregular 
line,  his  temerity  was  not  without  a  defiant  courage 
against  the  possible  moment  when  a  passing  cloud 
might  wipe  out  the  bounds  and  leave  him  in  its 
clutches. 

Sunset  was  the  time,  however,  when  the  grove 
assumed  its  most  fascinating  terrors,  when  the  still- 
bright  sky  behind  it  left  it  black  and  impenetrable. 
To  his  ear,  on  windless  evenings,  came  strange, 
subdued  movements,  subtle  treads,  soft  whisper 
ings,  filling  the  grove  with  the  undefined  mani 
festations  of  the  objective  thing  that  he  had  never 


214  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

wholly  distinguished  from  his  subjective  fear.  The 
grove  was  the  haunt  of  owls  whose  evening  awaken 
ings  filled  the  darkness  with  mysterious  questions; 
and  with  brooding  doves  whose  notes  near  and  far 
seemed  to  come  from  no  separate  source,  but 
rather  to  be  the  mournful  voice  of  the  woods  them 
selves. 

By  no  means  all  of  his  hours  were  spent  so  es 
sentially  alone  as  was  inevitable  in  the  presence  of 
such  moving  perceptions.  His  world  behind  the 
high,  vine-hung  walls  of  the  garden  was,  naturally 
it  seemed  to  him,  the  gathering  place  for  others 
from  without.  But  in  some  ways,  in  spite  of 
brothers  and  of  neighbors  of  his  own  age,  just  as 
he  found  a  difference  between  his  own  and  the 
outer  world,  he  discovered  a  difference  between 
himself  and  those  around  him  more  subtle  than 
the  common  daily  difference,  and  sharply  separa 
tive  even  when  they  were  boisterously  present 
about  him.  Sometimes  when  they  were  closest  he 
would  find  a  barrier  shutting  him  in  most  narrowly. 
It  was  exaggerated,  extreme,  but  it  foreshadowed 
the  faculty  that  later  played  its  determining  part 
in  his  life. 

Suddenly  when  the  play  was  lulled  there  would 
come  over  him  a  troubling  sense  of  inner  isolation. 
The  stones,  the  grass  about  him,  the  companions 
whom  he  could  touch  with  his  hand,  his  own  body, 
and  the  heat  of  the  sun  or  the  cool  of  the  breeze, 
the  sounds  and  odors  that  came  to  him  clearly, 
seemed  but  the  dream-spun  creations  of  his 
thought,  illusions  that  no  test  of  the  senses  could 
dispel.  His  senses  themselves  were  in  no  better 


Poor  Richard  215 

case.  Even  his  thoughts,  projecting  the  outer 
world  before  him,  became  objective  presences  be 
fore  an  ultimate  consciousness  that  he  always  came 
to  at  last  before  the  bubble  of  his  troubled  per 
ceptions  broke. 

When  this  illusion  of  an  illusion  had  passed  and 
the  world  about  him  had  resumed  its  external  re 
ality  he  had  no  wish  and  no  power  to  bring  it  back. 
That  it  was  an  illusion  he  felt  with  all  the  clarity 
of  his  more  normal  moments.  In  time  such  rare 
moments  ceased  to  trouble  him,  but  the  recollection 
of  them  never  so  wholly  departed  that  he  lost  the 
sense  of  an  aloof  consciousness  from  which  to  look 
out  even  upon  his  own  thoughts  and  feelings. 

The  occasions  that  were  most  likely  to  bring  such 
imaginings  were  otherwise  curiously  intimate. 
There  lay  in  the  midst  of  the  garden  a  broad  flat 
stone  covering  the  mouth  of  an  ancient  well,  and 
its  afternoon  coolness  in  the  shade  of  a  low  syringa 
no  doubt  conduced  to  the  invention  of  a  form  of 
play  unusually  sociable.  To  fill  their  pockets  in 
their  journeys  into  the  outer  world  with  lumps  of 
colored  sandstone;  to  search  for  days  among  the 
gravel  for  precious  "keels";  and  then  to  sit  on  the 
well-stone  in  a  circle  of  five  or  six,  and  grind,  stone 
upon  stone,  hour  upon  hour  of  a  summer's  after 
noon,  watching  their  cones  of  colored  sand  grow 
tall,  and  tinting  them  with  the  powdery  dust  of 
the  "keels"  —  such  was  their  favorite  pastime. 
And  in  those  hours  to  talk  out  of  depths  of  inno 
cence  and  ignorance!  They  had  seen  five  or  six 
or  seven  winters,  and  their  world  was  a  small 
garden  on  the  edge  of  a  small  town.  And  yet  they 


216  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

talked  of  history  and  politics,  of  wars  and  parties. 
If  a  maturer  cynicism  would  have  found  no  con 
tradiction  there,  finding  no  need  of  knowledge  or 
experience  for  endless  talk  or  bitter  partisanship, 
it  would  here  have  been  disarmed  by  the  innocence 
of  the  malice  from  which  such  animation  arose. 
A  powderhorn  from  Revolutionary  days,  and  a 
sword  from  the  Civil  War,  hanging  in  the  paternal 
hallway  near  the  portraits  of  the  ancestors  to  whom 
they  had  been  grim  enough  instruments  of  fight, 
had  stirred  their  imaginations  and  kindled  their 
loyalties.  In  their  hearts,  still  too  tender  to  hurt 
a  robin  or  a  toad,  it  was  a  secret  grief  that  the 
spots  of  stain  and  rust  were  not  from  the  blood  of 
their  enemies.  And  the  names  British  and  Rebel 
gave  whispering  intensity  to  hours  of  peaceful 
grinding. 

To  his  later  amused  reflections  the  thought  that 
politics  had  stolen  into  the  garden  and  laid  its 
shadow  upon  their  minds  seemed  an  incongruous 
touch  upon  the  idyllic  aloofness  of  his  childhood. 
But  he  knew  that  in  reality  it  had  hardly  been 
so  —  that  the  bare  names  of  parties  about  which 
their  talk  had  played  had  had  no  content,  were  but 
stirring  connotations  calling  for  loyalty  and  hos 
tility —  much  perhaps  as  in  the  grown-up  world  — 
and  not  unfit  for  association  with  that  other 
connotation  which  they  called  God.  They  had 
not  seemed  incongruous  then,  and  the  association 
was  made  promptly  and  loyally.  God  was  a 
Republican. 

Though  his  childhood  was  perhaps  unusually 
full  of  companionship  —  of  children,  of  servants, 


Poor  Richard  217 

whose  work  never  ceased  to  seem  to  him  some  su 
perior  form  of  play,  of  the  whole  range  of  relatives, 
from  the  visiting  ones  of  his  own  years  in  eternally 
clean  frocks,  to  the  reverend  elder  whose  pro 
digious  hat  and  gold-headed  cane  seemed  the  very 
crown  and  scepter  of  life  —  the  moments  which 
most  colored  his  later  reveries  were  the  moments 
when  he  was  most  alone.  He  was  not  lonely  or 
melancholy.  It  was  perhaps  that  in  unwonted  si 
lences  his  mind  caught  best  the  faint  responses  of 
his  own  spirit. 

It  was  in  such  moments  that  the  clear  brightness 
of  colors  stole  upon  his  conscious  senses  —  the 
deeper  tones  of  the  garden,  the  contrasts  of  the 
grove  against  the  sunset,  the  harmonies  of  the  out 
look  across  the  town  and  the  hills,  and  perhaps 
more  than  all  the  cloudless  sky,  remote,  varied, 
eternal,  without  detail  of  distracting  substance,  the 
essence  of  the  emotion  of  color.  It  was  to  the 
purity  of  such  perceptions  that  his  later  moments 
made  their  magic  return,  adding  to  their  own 
effectiveness  the  deeper  note  of  reminiscence,  and 
binding  his  life  together  in  a  cumulative  pattern  of 
sensuous  emotion. 

Though  his  life  was  thus  largely  healthfully  out 
of  doors  the  house  too  was  rich  for  him,  though  in 
a  different  way.  There  were  characteristic  colors 
there  too,  indeed,  and  he  never  lost  the  moving 
sense  of  atmospheres  that  breathed  from  the  har 
monies  of  subdued  light  in  certain  well-loved 
rooms  —  particularly  a  library  in  whose  deep- 
orange  draperies  and  rugs,  brown  leather  chairs, 


218  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

and  brown  books,  he  never  in  after  years  ceased 
to  find  the  spirit  of  leisurely  reading  —  warmth, 
and  quiet,  and  a  calm  cheerfulness.  Often  when 
the  sun  of  a  late  winter  afternoon  began  to  sink 
and  yellow  in  the  west  and  blend  with  the  warm 
tones  of  the  draperies,  he  would  come  hither,  and 
unconscious  of  the  causes  that  at  once  stirred  and 
soothed  him,  would  sit  in  quiet,  watching  the 
deepening  colors  till  the  growing  darkness  brought 
imaginings  more  in  keeping  with  the  house  itself. 

He  had  his  shrinkings  from  the  dark  when  it 
found  him  lingering  over  his  play  in  the  garden; 
but  his  fears  there  were  simple  and  direct  —  frank 
terror  of  the  invisible  and  the  unknown.  Within, 
however,  when  the  light  faded  and  the  quiet 
robbed  his  senses  of  their  immediate  occupations 
and  assurances,  the  invisible  became  populous  with 
a  curious  company  of  silent,  recurrent  figures, 
habitues  of  his  half-frightened,  half-fascinated 
fancy.  They  took  possession  of  their  accustomed 
spots  and  bound  him  to  his  accustomed  chair  — 
old  people  for  the  most  part,  with  white  hair  and 
thin  white  hands,  seated  by  the  fireplace  or  standing 
in  reverie  by  the  windows ;  the  tall  figure  of  a  priest 
forever  mounting  the  stairway  to  the  silent 
chambers  above,  and  through  the  rooms  a  woman 
moving  to  and  fro  in  stately  sorrow.  In  time  repe 
tition  eased  his  fears  and  gave  his  awe  a  touch  of 
friendliness,  but  it  never  eased  the  weight  of  an 
undefined  sadness  that  hovered  over  that  silent 
household. 

It  must  have  been  —  so  his  maturer  reason 
went  —  that  the  darkness  gave  too  sharp  a  sensi- 


Poor  Richard  219 

tiveness  to  his  imagination,  and  that  the  broad 
lines  of  his  first  fanciful  pictures  were  too  vivid  to 
be  escaped  from  again.  At  all  events  his  imagina 
tion  worked  more  normally  and  subtly  and  with 
much  more  variety  by  day,  though  it  worked  with 
much  the  same  materials.  Out  of  what  old  pic 
tures  in  books  or  on  the  walls,  old  costumes  in  attic 
chests,  slow  reminisences  of  elders  by  the  winter 
fire,  his  imagery  was  pieced,  his  later  memories 
found  scattered  though  incomplete  traces.  But  it 
is  certain  that  in  the  house  by  day  when  the  others 
were  absent,  or  quiet,  or  better  still  in  distant 
rooms  in  murmuring  conversation,  his  mind  was 
filled  with  pleasant  pictures  of  a  life  varied,  full, 
quite  different  from  his  own,  and  always  changing. 
They  never  ceased  to  be  fancies.  But  they  had 
more  than  the  thin  evanescence  of  his  out-door 
play.  They  were  clothed  with  reality,  and  with 
an  authority  that  he  respected  to  at  least  this 
degree  —  that  if  he  let  his  fancy  play  within  doors 
it  was  they  who  had  the  right  to  people  it.  Out  of 
doors  his  fancy  was  gothic,  filled  with  dwarfs  and 
talking  birds  and  animate  stones.  There  there  was 
no  restraint  upon  him.  But  within  he  was  rigidly 
humane.  The  house  itself  gave  the  suggestion  for 
this  difference,  no  doubt,  and  he  followed  the  law 
it  imposed.  It  was  old  and  homely,  and  filled  with 
the  simple  accumulation  of  more  than  one  genera 
tion  of  his  ancestors.  It  was  a  house,  and  so  a 
human  product,  and  his  response  was  to  act  in 
kind.  Many  years  later,  searching  seriously  among 
his  tastes  and  preferences,  he  found  a  complete  and 
vivid  ideal  of  a  quiet  and  full  domesticity  whose 


22o  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

axiomatic  values  went  back  for  their  sanction  to 
these  early  fanciful  responses  to  the  spirit  of  the 
house. 

His  childhood  lasted  on  much  these  terms  until 
his  thirteenth  or  fourteenth  year.  There  was 
growth  and  development,  it  is  true,  but  in  kind  it 
remained  little  changed.  It  was  a  healthy  child 
hood,  and  if  there  was  a  more  than  usual  dreami 
ness  and  objective  make-believe  there  was  in  that 
no  distorting  asymmetry.  He  was  frankly  and 
pleasantly  undeluded  by  his  fancies.  And  it  was 
a  very  natural  childhood  in  the  full  modern  sense 
of  that  term.  If  he  had  learned  good  manners  it 
had  been  less  by  precept  than  by  having  nothing 
else  to  imitate.  No  doubt  he  had  had  his  moments 
of  wilfulness  that  were  punished,  and  of  selfishness 
that  were  rebuked.  But  they  were  less  significant 
than  the  unconscious  influence  of  a  kindly  home. 

In  the  early  part  of  his  childhood  he  was  taught 
nothing  consciously.  If  he  learned  his  letters  in 
his  fifth  year  it  was  the  accidental  reflection  of  an 
elder  brother's  learning,  picked  up  as  he  had  picked 
up  the  names  of  colors  among  the  stones  and 
"keels"  of  his  play,  or  as  he  had  picked  up  the 
syllables  from  the  backs  of  the  Britannica  on  the 
library  shelves  before  he  could  read  in  his  primer, 
and  with  no  sense  of  their  significance.  The  li 
brary,  where  he  spent  long  hours  of  winter  after 
noons,  and  where  indeed  he  listened  to  readings 
that  flashed  strange  pictures  upon  his  mind,  had  no 
distinct  meaning  for  him.  He  took  the  books  there 
for  granted.  They  were  among  the  natural  conditions 
of  existence,  like  the  house  and  the  garden. 


Poor  Richard  221 

In  the  latter  half  of  his  childhood  he  went  to 
school,  it  is  true,  but  school  came  to  him  in  the 
natural  course  of  events,  just  as  he  fell  into  the 
way  of  the  immemorial  games  that  children  have 
never  let  die.  There  was  nothing  in  his  going  that 
savored  either  of  compulsion  or  privilege.  And  in 
the  school  there  was  nothing  to  reveal  the  sharp 
change,  for  which  the  school  stands,  from  bar 
barism  to  urbanity.  For  the  modern  kindly 
methods  of  teaching  had  already  begun  to  dis 
place  the  older  harsh  tyranny  of  the  traditional 
schoolmaster.  He  glided  into  the  precincts  of 
learning,  therefore,  on  the  wings  of  play.  He 
learned  without  knowing  that  he  learned.  And 
his  school  hours,  like  those  in  the  garden,  were 
happily  spontaneous.  He  had  not,  to  be  sure, 
fallen  heir  to  the  full  development  of  this  sym 
pathetic  method.  And  before  the  end  of  his  child 
hood  he  encountered  rebelliously  enough  teachers 
who  derived  from  the  older  traditions.  Defeat, 
chagrin,  and  his  first  suffocation  sense  of  impo 
tence  before  tyranny  came  upon  him  memorably 
from  these  experiences;  but  they  were  too  rare  to 
break  his  spirited  opposition  or  alter  his  long- 
confirmed  attitude  toward  the  school.  He  remained 
to  the  time  of  his  adolescence  a  child  of  play. 

So  it  was  that  years  later,  when  his  habits  of 
make-believe  had  turned  insensibly  into  habits  of 
reflection  and  reverie,  he  could  look  back  upon  a 
childhood  peculiarly  natural  and  spontaneous.  It 
was  a  childhood  unusually  happy,  and  though  com 
monplace  in  its  environment  and  external  equip 
ment  and  not  uncommon  in  its  internal  tempera- 


222  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

ment  and  native  gifts,  yet  of  its  kind  and  in  itself 
rarely  perfect. 

It  was  with  troubling  surprise,  therefore,  that  he 
found  himself  not  so  wholly  shocked  as  it  seemed 
to  him  he  should  have  been  at  the  pitiful  record  of 
that  child  of  the  older  century,  who  had  died  at 
"5  yeares  and  3  days  old  onely,  after  considerable 
progress  in  Comenius's  Janua  and  with  a  strong 
passion  for  Greeke."  It  seemed  to  him  that  he 
ought  to  have  looked  with  horror  upon  a  code  that 
could  permit  such  a  life  and  cause  such  a  death. 
Instead  he  began  to  have  doubts  of  the  code  that 
had  guided  his  own  first  years.  It  had  always  been 
a  matter  of  thankfulness  with  him  that  his  child 
hood  was  beyond  the  reach  of  circumstance,  and 
would  remain  for  him  perfect  no  matter  what  un 
toward  straits  he  might  fall  into.  And  now  an 
ironic  fate,  changing  his  point  of  view,  told  him 
that  neither  his  childhood  nor  anything  past, 
present,  or  future,  was  beyond  the  reach  of  cir 
cumstance.  He  felt  no  bitterness.  His  childhood 
still  shed  its  moving  and  illuminating  reflections 
upon  his  present.  But  reflectively,  and  with  the 
calmer  emotions  that  go  with  the  rational  per 
ceptions,  he  came  to  see  a  curious  waste  running 
through  it. 

His  old  sense  of  its  value  was  indeed  still  posi 
tive.  It  was,  he  still  saw,  a  perfect  childhood,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  childhood;  and  he  never 
ceased  to  have  moments  of  protest  that  this  ten 
derly  luminous  and  rich  thing  should  be  anything 
less  than  an  end  in  itself  —  should  be  a  means  to 
an  end  grosser  and  tougher  than  itself  —  should 


Poor  Richard  223 

need  therefore  to  be  twisted  out  of  its  own  bent  to 
serve  as  a  beginning  for  something  less  delicately 
appealing  and  less  perfectible.  But  he  knew  that 
childhood  was  not  the  end  of  life  in  point  of  pur 
pose  any  more  than  in  point  of  time;  and  though 
he  gave  over  the  attempt  to  define  that  purpose, 
he  knew  that  the  most  romantic,  though  they  had 
been  known  to  put  it  to  a  child  to  solve,  had  never 
attained  even  to  that  wisdom  until  they  had  ceased 
irrevocably  to  be  children. 

So  it  was  that  though  he  was  touched  with  a 
half  angered  pity  when  he  came  one  day  upon  the 
grief-stricken  words  of  that  courtly  father  mourn 
ing  the  death  of  a  child  who  had  been  so  "far  from 
childish  in  anything  he  said  or  did,"  he  saw  a  little 
way  past  his  own  prejudice  to  something  that  lay 
behind  the  shocking  cruelty  of  that  little  tragedy. 
He  saw  it  perhaps  the  more  readily  in  recollection 
of  the  violent  shifting  and  tossing  and  aimless  pain 
of  his  own  later  years  of  adolescence,  and  the  help 
lessness  of  his  youth.  For  he  saw  that  however 
exaggerated  was  the  case  of  poor  Richard  Evelyn, 
it  had  been  animated  by  an  idea  perhaps  nearer 
the  truth  than  the  idea  of  his  own.  It  had  looked 
forward.  It  had  looked  forward  to  something  that 
he  came  strongly  to  realize  the  lack  of  in  his  own 
mature  spirit.  And  when  he  glanced  thoughtfully 
about  him,  nation  wide,  at  his  own  generation, 
brought  up  in  ways  not  very  different  from  his  own, 
he  saw  that  they  too  had  missed  it. 

This  sense  of  loss  took  objective  expression  for 
him  in  the  commonly  observed  lack  of  poetry  of 
his  time  and  people.  But  this  lack  seemed  to  him 


224  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

significant  of  something  larger.  It  was  itself  more 
than  an  objective  lack  to  be  deplored.  And  it  was 
not  to  be  explained  by  the  garish  newness  of  his 
country.  When  his  country  had  been  newer  still 
it  had  been  richer  in  just  that  thing.  What  he 
detected  in  himself  and  in  the  intellectual  quality 
of  the  times  was  a  lack  of  that  richness  of  con 
sciousness  and  that  clarity  and  simplicity  of  vision 
that  finds  its  expression  sometimes  in  poetry  but  is 
essentially  the  same  for  the  deepest  and  justest 
thought  upon  human  affairs  in  whatever  form. 

This  observation,  which  he  had  long  shared  in 
deed  as  a  commonplace  with  many  thoughtful  ob 
servers  of  American  life,  came  now  into  a  new 
association  in  his  mind.  His  childhood  had  been 
typical,  typical  at  least  in  the  influences  that  had 
formed  it.  And  he  saw  something  in  those  influ 
ences  that  it  seemed  not  fanciful  to  connect  with 
his  own  and  his  country's  deficiency.  He  himself 
had  had  a  strong  impulse  toward  poetry.  It  had 
been  dogged  enough,  and  had  kept  him  in  his  later 
years  tied  to  his  poets,  his  prosody,  his  tropes,  his 
diffident  exercise  book,  long  enough  to  have  caused 
him  a  mild  and  humorous  surprise  at  the  meager- 
ness  of  his  output  —  a  meagerness  not  so  much  of 
bulk  as  of  substance. 

He  was  not  looking  for  genius  in  himself;  he 
was  looking  for  pedestrian  respectability.  But 
when  he  came  to  write  he  had  nothing  respectable 
to  say.  The  flashes  from  his  childhood  that  came 
upon  him,  intense  and  simple,  luminous  with  the 
lyric  essence,  brought  with  the  force  of  their  im 
pulse  and  the  limpid  clarity  of  their  outlook  nothing 


Poor  Richard  225 

to  look  upon.  His  perceptions  had  played,  in  those 
younger  years,  upon  a  substance  which  maturity 
could  never  broaden  or  deepen.  The  moments 
when  his  young  spirit  had  first  entered  his  per 
ceptions  had  been  occupied  with  matter  which  his 
growing  mind  could  never  expand  —  sounds  and 
odors,  forms  and  colors  which  were  the  same  to 
his  childhood  as  they  would  ever  be  to  his  youth 
and  his  age. 

And  they  had  determined  his  deepest  preoccu 
pations.  These  preoccupations  had  intensified 
wastefully  only  the  changeless  uniform  percep 
tions,  the  common  intuitions  of  sense  for  which 
the  single  word  suffices  —  things  static,  impene 
trable  to  thought,  useless  alike  to  the  discursive 
reason  and  to  the  significant  element  of  poetic  ex 
pression.  His  childhood  years  had  spent  their  lyric 
enlightenment  upon  the  simple  bodily  sensations, 
and  not  upon  those  moving  relations  that  range  in 
the  human  field  and  give  to  the  objects  of  sense 
that  significance  that  makes  them  humane. 

The  result  was  a  poetry  like  most  of  the  poetry 
of  his  age  and  country,  a  poetry  not  without  a  cer 
tain  visual  charm  and  grace  in  the  concrete  ele 
ments,  but  in  its  thought  either  vapid  or  else 
crudely  expository.  Actually  his  best  fell  far  be 
low  the  best  of  its  time,  but  it  had  the  contemporary 
quality.  There  was  one  set  of  stanzas  that  he  had 
long  saved,  at  first  for  extraneous  reasons,  and 
afterwards  for  the  completeness  with  which  they 
seemed  to  express  the  wistful,  sweetly  nostalgic 
thinness  of  his  typical  culture. 


226  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

Here,  long  leagues  from  the  burdened  town 

Where  memories  crowd  and  fret, 
Leagues  along  on  the  trackless  down 

Let  us  wander  and  forget. 

/ 

How  were  we  to  remember  here 

Tidings  of  yesterday, 

Where  the  June  winds,  sweeping  the  heavens  clear 
Of  flocking  cloud  and  smoke-rack  drear, 

Drive  the  soul's  mists  away? 

Had  we  not  ere  last  year's  seeds  were  sown 

Wailed  ills  now  suffered  not? 
Shall  we  not  ere  this  year's  seeds  are  strown 

To-day's  ills  have  forgot? 

Were  it  not  enough  that  the  warm  June  wind 

Play  in  your  tangled  hair? 
Were  it  not  enough  in  the  grass  to  find 
Starry  daisies  and  rue  entwined 

With  phlox  for  your  tresses  fair? 

Shall  we  lament  while  the  shepherd  sun, 
That  has  shone  for  his  shepherd  lovers 

Since  old  Theocritus'  race  was  run, 
High  in  his  June  flight  hovers? 

Can  we  think  back  to  the  first  spring  days 
On  the  boon  of  life  and  the  years  — 

The  boon  of  the  taste  of  life  —  and  gaze 

In  our  hearts  where  a  deathless  minstrel  plays 

His  fresh  and  young  and  eternal  lays, 
And  still  shed  present  tears? 

Here  on  the  leagues  of  the  trackless  earth 
The  warring  will  is  merged 


Poor  Richard  227 

Into  the  Mother  that  gave  it  birth, 
By  a  thousand  voices  urged  — 

The  querulous  cry  of  the  land-lost  tern 

Vain-searching  for  the  sea, 
Rock  nooks  where  tiger  lilies  burn, 
The  shaded  damps  of  the  maiden  fern, 
Wild  rose  scents  where  we  may  discern 

Nature's  sweet  alchemy. 

Here  where  the  waist-high  thistle  vaunts 

His  sky-kissed  purple  flame, 
Here  where  the  mullein's  high  shaft  taunts 

Primrose  of  sad  sweet  name, 

How  were  we,  where  the  crocus  first 

Broke  through  the  runneled  snow, 
And  where  the  proud  shy  violet  erst 
Forth  on  the  high  March  noonday  burst, 

To  renew  our  meed  of  woe? 

And  you,  love,  when  your  dreaming  eyes 

Lift  yearning  to  the  sun, 
Does  not  your  soul  lose  its  own  emprise, 
Its  own  impatience,  its  own  surmise, 
And  feel  at  rest  with  the  earth  and  the  skies, 

With  the  universe  at  one? 

Here,  then,  leagues  from  the  troubled  town 

With  its  ceaseless  surge  and  fret, 
Leagues  along  on  the  trackless  down 

Let  us  wander,  and  forget. 

There  it  was,  simple,  sensuous,  rhythmic  —  in 
stinct  with  the  accessories  and  perfectly  innocent 
of  significance. 

When  at  last  he  had  come  to  realize  that  the  end 


228  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

of  maturity  was  not  merely  to  thrill  in  his  child 
hood  fashion  at  the  intensity  of  his  perceptions,  but 
rather  to  find  the  human  significance  of  them,  he 
did  indeed  turn  his  mind  from  this  fruitless  ex 
ercise  to  thought  itself.  And  though  he  suspected 
himself  of  lacking  even  in  his  logical  processes  a 
foundation  that  an  earlier  start  might  have  af 
forded  him,  it  was  not  so  much  that  he  was  not 
able  to  think  logically  as  that  his  thinking  was  in 
a  way  hard  and  geometrical.  It  lacked  in  a  certain 
mellow  harmony  of  reason  and  emotion,  a  full  rich 
ness  and  depth,  a  lyric  illumination,  that  he  knew 
was  the  essence  of  the  deepest  humane  expression. 
If  he  could  have  transferred  to  his  intellection 
the  moving  intensity  that  his  childhood  had  cast 
upon  his  sense  perceptions,  he  knew  that  his  poetry 
and  his  thinking  could  have  had  a  value  that  he 
was  powerless  to  bring  to  them  now.  He  saw  that 
however  intense  that  childhood's  preoccupation 
had  made  his  sensuous  thrill,  that  intensity  was 
now  incommunicable,  and  so  wasted. 

His  childhood  had  gone  all  in  one  direction.  It 
had  enriched  and  intensified  certain  apprehensions 
through  the  intimacy  with  which  they  had  been 
woven  into  the  very  texture  of  his  spirit;  and  those 
apprehensions  were  with  him  yet,  more  intimately 
than  any  other  later  acquisitions  could  ever  be. 
But  they  were  futile.  They  were  not  of  the  stuff 
of  manhood.  His  manhood  had  gone,  perforce, 
and  because  it  was  manhood,  all  in  the  other  di 
rection.  It  had  had  to  begin  over.  It  had  had  to 
acquire  all  its  substance  anew.  For  the  stuff  of 
manhood  could  hardly  be  the  emotional  intensity 


Poor  Richard  229 

of  a  perception  of  blue  sky,  of  autumn  browns  and 
yellows,  of  thrilling  odors,  and  of  sweet  sounds. 
He  knew  that  there  was  something  still  childish  in 
the  dulcet  cadences  of  even  the  noblest  celebra 
tions  of  those  perceptions  for  their  own  sakes  — 
often  in  Wordsworth,  sometimes  in  Keats,  and  less 
worthily  in  most  of  the  poetasters  of  the  present. 
There  was  need  for  a  little  more  iron  in  the  poet's 
soul. 

The  thing  was  that  the  romantic  naturalists  were 
all  for  leaving  out  of  the  story  the  one  thing  that 
was  to  give  the  story  its  point.  And  he  had  grown 
up  under  the  shadow  of  their  wings.  They  were 
all  for  what  was  natural;  and  what  they  called 
natural  was  the  thing  that  was  spontaneous.  His 
own  point  of  rebellion,  however,  was  that  the  sig 
nificant  thing  about  life  lay  in  what  men  had  made 
of  it.  And  what  men  had  made  of  it  —  accumu 
lated  in  the  records  of  what  had  been  nobly  thought 
and  done  in  the  past  —  was  just  what  by  being  so 
charmingly  natural  and  spontaneous,  he  had  so 
far,  and  for  long  thereafter,  so  wholly  missed. 

But  these  things,  though  he  had  later  set  himself 
to  acquire  them  consciously  and  with  untiring  in 
terest,  could  never,  he  knew,  and  in  the  event  never 
did,  become  bone  of  his  bone.  They  never  became 
of  the  very  texture  of  his  thought,  the  form  of  his 
mind,  as  they  must  have  become  before  he  could 
have  been  specifically  a  poet,  or,  lacking  that 
genius,  have  attained  to  that  richness  of  conscious 
ness  that  lies  behind  the  subtle  mastery  of  the  best 
that  life  has  to  offer  to  the  heart  and  to  the  mind. 
They  never  became  the  intimate  stuff  of  his  spirit. 


230  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

Not  that  he  would  have  brought  back  the  era 
that  had  been  so  harsh  to  poor  Richard  Evelyn. 
That  age  had  had  its  excesses  as  evil  perhaps  as 
his  own.  He  cherished  still  the  positive  values  of 
his  spontaneous  freedom.  But  he  could  not  forget 
the  quick  sensitiveness  of  his  responses  to  what 
ever  vague  rumors  of  the  human  past  had  filtered 
down  to  him  —  from  sword  and  powderhorn,  pic 
tures,  old  costumes,  stories,  the  talk  of  elders,  the 
atmosphere  of  the  house,  to  which  he  had  reacted 
with  visual  presentments  with  all  the  humane  spirit 
he  had.  He  could  not  forget  that  this  sensitiveness 
to  what  was  humane  might  have  been  fed  with 
what  was  significant  as  well  as  with  what  was  in 
significant,  calculated  instead  of  casual,  and  might 
have  been  informed  instead  of  left  formless.  And 
he  could  not  forget  that  even  the  school,  when  it 
came  to  take  over  the  task,  did  little  to  alter  the 
way  of  his  mind  that  his  childhood  had  set  him  out 
upon,  confirming  the  natural  impression  of  such  a 
childhood  that  from  the  casualness  of  play  with 
the  visual  objects  around  him  should  arise  the 
things  of  value  out  of  which  his  maturity  should 
be  made. 

It  was  with  such  thoughts,  then,  that  he  came  to 
catch,  behind  the  harshness  of  that  age  that  had 
seemed  so  hard  upon  its  children  and  so  productive 
of  poets,  something  of  its  animating  spirit.  The 
old  severity,  which  had  been  too  stern  in  its  ex 
cess  for  that  incomparable  blossom  of  the  Res 
toration,  had  had  a  heart,  though  it  had  had  a 
mind  also.  For  it  knew  that  though  the  child  lost 
little  of  the  glamor  of  childhood  no  matter  what 


Poor  Richard  231 

its  preoccupations,  having  the  power  to  color  what 
ever  it  touched  with  its  own  luminous  and  endear 
ing  atmosphere,  the  man's  thoughts  would  be  for 
ever  more  enlightened,  more  rich,  more  subtle,  if 
the  indurating  discipline  of  the  child's  preoccupa 
tions  had  been  bent  from  the  first  upon  the  things 
that  his  maturity  would  find  of  the  supremest 
value. 

As  it  was,  the  illumination  that  so  intensified  the 
magic  of  those  rare  moments  when  the  light  of  his 
childhood  flashed  back  upon  him  never  animated 
the  substance  of  his  maturer  reflections,  never  gave 
them  that  inner  conviction  of  reality  that  breathed 
a  spirit  into  the  inanimate  world  of  his  sensuous 
perceptions.  He  had  lost  something  forever. 


II 

THE  AWKWARD  AGE 

HIS  early  youth  was  curious,  and  yet  typical. 
It  had  none  of  the  serenity  of  his  childhood ; 
it  was  marred  by  an  April  suddenness,  a  March  vio 
lence;  it  was  abrupt,  explosive,  extravagant.  It 
came  upon  him  with  strange  and  disturbing  signs. 
In  his  earlier  days,  in  the  simplicity  of  his  outlook, 
his  mind  for  all  its  occasional  harkenings  to  the 
voice  of  his  spirit  had  been  singularly  free  from 
any  consciousness  of  itself.  Experience  and  feeling 
had  glided  into  experience  and  feeling  with  un 
questioning  calm;  and  though  he  had  often  reacted 
vigorously,  like  a  healthy  animal,  to  the  immediate 
push  of  his  surroundings,  his  consciousness  had 
been  direct  and  naive.  It  had  been  troubled  neither 
with  the  larger  bearings  of  his  problems  nor  with 
the  new  and  tyrannous  stirrings  of  conscious 
emotion. 

Then  suddenly  these  stirrings  came  upon  him. 
They  roiled  the  clear  shallows  of  his  spirit.  New 
voices  spoke  to  him  inarticulately,  and  he  had  no 
experience  of  how  to  answer  them  and  no  terms 
in  which  to  ask  for  help.  Disconcerting  tears 
sprang  into  his  eyes  from  feelings  of  which  he 
knew  the  force  and  the  depth,  but  whose  nature 
was  strange  and  sometimes  terrifying. 


The  Awkward  Age  233 

It  was  a  period  in  which  his  spirit  welled  up  and 
overflowed.  He  needed  channels  and  curbs,  and 
channels  and  curbs  were  just  what  his  typical 
breeding  had  eschewed.  The  overflow  found  no 
driving  current  to  clarify  its  waters.  It  stood 
creaming  and  mantling,  stagnant  and  clogged. 
Twenty  lines  of  Homer  a  day  —  anything  hard 
and  regular  and  humane  —  might  have  put  firm 
ground  under  his  feet.  A  touch  of  the  birch  might 
have  taught  him  that  some  mental  things  were  as 
damnable  as  some  moral  things.  But  he  had  no 
Homer  and  no  birch.  He  mooned,  callowly,  hours 
on  end. 

In  other  respects  the  first  years  of  his  youth 
were  a  time  endeared  to  his  later  humor  by  the 
pathos  of  their  awkwardness,  their  flounderings, 
their  rebellious  sincerities.  A  sudden  disconcerting 
self -consciousness  broke  in  upon  him.  His  boy 
hood  habits  were  at  a  loss.  Like  his  voice  that 
broke  suddenly  between  bass  and  childish  treble, 
his  manner  broke  between  jaunty  assurance  and 
helpless  childish  tears.  He  was  restless.  He  did 
not  know  how  to  control  his  new  being.  His 
spirit  was  awkward  —  all  hands  and  feet.  He  was 
ashamed.  And  he  disguised  his  softest  and  most 
radiant  moments  in  strident  noise.  There  were 
times  when  he  was  all  activity,  filling  the  house 
with  clamor,  or,  rebelliously  disobedient,  wander 
ing  from  home  in  forbidden  company.  At  other 
times  he  spent  his  hours  in  the  house  over  books 
that  he  did  not  understand,  proudly  conscious  of 
family  councils  solicitous  for  his  bodily  health.  He 
picked  up  strange,  harmless  oaths  and  uttered  them 


234  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

at  calculated  moments.  He  began  to  launch  upon 
the  dinner  table,  not  the  artless  chatter  of  events, 
but  sudden  bombs  of  opinion.  His  course  began 
an  uncertain  diagonal  across  the  grooves  of  his 
childhood,  and  the  friction  rasped  but  interested 
him.  He  was  stirred  by  his  rough  jolting.  His 
new  course  seemed  inexplicably  right  though  he 
could  find  no  defense  for  it.  His  impotence  and 
irritation  when  he  was  put  to  it  to  justify  his  de 
fiant  opinions  developed  a  phrase  that  came  to  be, 
in  its  petulent  iteration,  characteristic  of  his  whole 
boyhood.  "I  protest!"  he  would  cry,  prefacing  a 
dictum  that  seemed  to  him  rebelliously  true;  and 
when  amused  elders  pointed  out  the  humor  of  his 
invariable  protestation,  his  spirit  cried  out  from 
still  greater  depths  his  rebellious  "I  protest!" 

There  was  no  conscious  pathos  and  no  softness 
in  his  rebellion.  It  was  militant,  noisy,  crude.  It 
was  irrational  even  to  his  own  perception,  and  not 
of  a  kind  to  win  understanding  from  others.  But 
it  was  not  morose  or  brooding.  He  had  over  him 
a  watchful  parental  sympathy,  and  though  this  was 
personal  and  patient  rather  than  actively  critical 
and  corrective,  it  saved  him  from  morbidity.  He 
was  never  wholly  turned  in  upon  himself.  And 
there  was  enough  laughter  in  him  and  in  them  to 
keep  him  healthy.  Like  his  childhood,  however, 
his  youth  was  left  to  its  spontaneous  courses.  And 
when  the  explosions  came  that  marked  the  moments 
of  his  growth  he  was  helpless  enough  before  their 
energy,  and  bewildered  enough  in  the  regions  where 
they  left  him. 

The  first  of  the  explosions  that  marred  his  youth 


The  Awkward  Age  235 

struck  at  him  deeply.  In  his  childhood  the  church 
had  been  one  of  the  normal  unquestioned  con 
ditions  of  life,  perhaps  the  more  that  his  own  grand 
father,  in  surplice  and  bands,  had  warmed  the 
mystery  of  the  weekly  service  with  his  kindly  face 
and  familiar  voice.  From  his  earliest  years  the 
name  of  God  had  been  on  his  tongue  with  the 
simple,  frank  familiarity  of  household  acquain 
tance,  and  accepted  with  the  same  simple  faith  with 
which  he  had  accepted  the  deeds  and  dangers  of 
unseen  ancestors.  The  weekly  service,  its  constant 
association  with  his  grandfather,  the  nightly  prayer, 
had  worn  therefore  a  deep  groove  in  his  mind.  It 
was  but  natural  that  in  the  sudden  expansion  of 
his  feelings  and  the  mystic  deepening  of  his  per 
ceptions  the  touch  of  infinity  in  the  thought  of 
God  should  have  stirred  him  deeply. 

In  the  humbling  immensity  of  a  starry  night  the 
skies,  no  longer  flat  and  one,  but  many,  and  near 
and  far,  flashed  on  his  imagination  their  immanent 
mystery.  They  would  have  done  so  of  their  own 
suggestion,  but  it  was  there  too  that  in  the  cos 
mology  of  his  traditions  he  placed  that  other  mys 
tery  with  whose  articulate  symbolism  his  churchly 
associations  had  made  him  long  familiar.  And  on 
the  azure  background  beyond  the  uttermost  stars 
his  fancy  traced  the  faint  entrancing  imagery  of 
heaven,  like  evanescent  etchings  on  the  blue  depths 
of  steel.  Without  deceiving  him  it  was  still  very 
real,  perhaps  the  more  that  here  the  new  reach  of 
his  emotions  could  play  without  restraint  and  his 
new  hunger  could  be  richly  fed.  At  night  when 
the  quiet  of  the  household  promised  seclusion  he 


236  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

would  draw  his  bed  silently  to  the  open  window 
and  lie  rapt  before  the  pageantry  of  the  skies,  until 
sleep  overtook  him  with  its  vivid,  tyrannous 
pageantry  of  dreams. 

All  this  period  had  its  engaging  side.  The  quick 
ness  of  his  moods,  the  sudden  boyish  softness,  the 
shame-faced  self-consciousness,  the  undeceptive, 
boisterous  disguises,  the  freedom,  the  naturalness  of 
his  awkward,  petulant  intensity,  the  sweep  of  his 
fancy  —  all  these  things  had  for  those  who  watched 
him  from  without  with  half-understanding,  the 
clear  charm  that  lies  in  the  unspoiled  sponta 
neities  of  developing  life.  Even  for  him,  in  his  duller 
years,  though  he  knew  the  dangers  to  which  his 
utter  freedom  had  exposed  him,  its  spell  quickened 
in  him  unbidden  yearnings  that  defied  his  better 
judgment. 

But  his  judgment  weighed  more  calmly  and 
steadily  the  reaction  that  followed.  The  new  un 
conscious,  vigorous  logic  that  filled  him  with  quick 
rebellious  opinions,  wandering  restlessly  abroad  for 
food,  fell  in  some  moment  of  idle  reading  upon  a 
report  that  there  was  no  God.  It  pointed  out  the 
miseries  of  life,  and  with  quick  logic  shattered  his 
faith  in  that  enveloping  goodness  that  had  stood 
for  him  vaguely  as  a  bulwark  against  wrong.  His 
own  moments  of  personal  desolation  had  never  put 
doubts  in  his  mind.  Rather  they  had  cast  him 
more  intimately  upon  that  sympathy  which  his 
faith  created  for  him.  But  the  objective  picture 
of  the  suffering  of  others,  stirring  his  own  sympathy 
and  his  will  to  help,  brought  to  him  nothing  but 
blame  for  a  God  who  was  all  powerful  but  who  still 


The  Awkward  Age  237 

failed  to  stir  a  hand  in  relief.  Even  this,  however, 
might  not  have  outlasted  the  fever  of  his  sympathy 
if  the  writer  had  not  gone  on  to  smile  in  scientific 
terms  at  the  superstition  of  a  heaven  beyond  the 
stars.  If  the  deductions  were  not  inevitable  from 
the  data  cited,  yet  his  inexperience  was  helpless  in 
the  face  of  his  reason;  and  when  he  again  looked  at 
the  stars  it  was  in  anguish,  and  his  fancy  found  no 
tracery  of  heaven  on  the  hard  blue  background  of 
space. 

His  heart  recoiled  in  terror  from  his  thoughts. 
Looking  at  the-  stars  he  said  to  himself  that  there 
was  no  God.  There  was  no  God,  he  said  to  himself 
in  the  long  miserere  of  the  Litany.  And  in  saying 
this  he  seemed  to  himself  to  have  become  a  monster. 
Yet  he  had  no  power  to  change  at  will  the  report 
of  his  logic.  Every  vestige  of  his  passional 
nature  —  duty,  inclination,  fear  —  was  arrayed 
against  his  intelligence,  but  he  had  no  choice;  his 
intelligence  was  he.  His  desolation  was  not  as  for 
a  loss;  it  was  as  for  a  deed  of  horror  unforgivable. 
He  was  an  outcast  hungering  at  the  gates;  and 
always  as  he  took  a  step  to  enter  he  said  as  in  duty 
bound,  "There  is  no  God."  And  he  turned  back 
wearily  and  in  despair.  His  misery  was  intense. 
He  prayed  incessantly  the  short  desperate  prayer 
for  faith. 

In  the  end  old  habit  and  the  fervent  emphasis  of 
his  desire  battered  at  his  reason  and  numbed  it  into 
submission.  Before  that  time  came,  however,  he 
wasted  himself  in  hopeless  pain,  and  created  in  his 
own  life  a  devastated  area  that  even  the  passage 
of  time  could  never  color  or  soften  or  endear.  His 


238  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

treasonable  intellectual  ardor  had  lived,  no  doubt, 
because  of  the  intoxication  of  a  newly  found  power, 
and  had  died  because,  when  the  burst  was  over  and 
the  point  was  understood,  there  was  nothing  more 
to  do  about  it.  He  was  instinctively  hungering,  not 
for  intellectual  labor,  but  for  the  excitement  of  ex 
ercise,  and  he  was  sufficiently  of  his  time  to  have 
but  little  sobering  labor  to  temper  the  excesses  of 
his  excitement.  He  was  naturally  all  for  sponta 
neity  and  excess. 

He  was  not  done  with  his  acrid  atheism.  In  the 
wasteful  vagrancies  of  his  youth  he  came  back  to 
it  again  and  again.  In  the  meantime  he  became 
suddenly  subdued  and  commonplace,  as  though  all 
the  ardors  of  his  spirit  had  gathered  themselves  for 
a  flight,  and,  defeated,  had  withdrawn,  wearied  and 
broken. 

Other  preoccupations  followed  to  divert  his  mind 
to  outward  things.  The  family  fortunes,  never 
great,  and  not  founded  on  the  ardent,  straight 
forward  acquisitiveness  that  characterized  the 
normal  middle-class  prosperity  about  him,  slowly 
declined.  Straitened  circumstances  narrowed 
the  range  of  his  growing  powers  and  curiosities  so 
that  for  a  long  period  an  apparent  stagnation,  and 
very  real  external  limitations,  rendered  his  case  in- 
distinguishably  common.  In  one  respect,  however, 
his  case  was  not  wholly  representative;  it  did  not 
occur  to  those  in  charge  of  these  declining  fortunes 
that  he  should  abandon  what  seemed  to  them  the 
normal  freedom  and  leisure  of  youth  and  take  part 
in  the  daily  toil  that  sustained  the  family. 

Cut  off  from  the  active  pleasures  of  his  growing 


The  Awkward  Age  239 

associates  by  successive  migrations  and  successive 
stages  of  poverty,  he  turned  from  the  outer  world 
to  the  world  of  books.    In  his  later  memories  there 
was  a  curious  duality  in  the  period  of  his  life  that 
followed.     On   the   one  hand   there   was   the   in 
creasingly  dingy  world  of  reality.     Cares  marred 
the  faces  of  those  who  had  made  idyllic  the  old  life 
in  the  house  behind  the  walled  garden.    There  were 
now  dark  and  narrow  rooms  in  place  of  the  sunlit 
brown  and  orange  library  and  the  haunts  of  his  old 
dream  people;    there  was  a  sordid  neighborhood 
whose  unlovely  life  obtruded  itself  upon  his  wonted 
seclusion;   there  were  narrow  unclean  streets  that 
must  be  traversed  daily  where  glaring  billboards 
took  the  place  of  lawns.    On  the  other  hand  there 
was  oblivion  from  all  this  searing  ugliness  in  a 
slowly  opening  world   of   romance,   whose   bright 
colors   and    gleaming   pageantry,    whose   unreined 
freedom  and  intensity  of  emotion  gave  him,  now  in 
his  period  of  expanding  powers,  all  that  he  had  to 
feed  upon.     It  was  an  opiate  whose  dreams  rapt 
him  away  from  reality  into  a  world  that  by  em 
phasis,  by  love,  by  every  appeal  to  his  gentler 
tastes,  became  more  real  for  him  than  reality  itself. 
Though  no  doubt  this  opiate  saved  him  from 
many  of  the  influences  of  the  unlovely  life  into 
which  he  had  fallen,  and  guarded  him  from  re 
actions  that  might  have  been,  if  more  healthily 
active,  at  the  same  time  more  of  the  kind  of  that 
sordid  life  itself,  yet  it  had  the  dangers  of  an 
opiate  —  it  was  an  evasion,  not  a  correction,  and  it 
fastened  itself  upon  his  habits  seductively,  pointing 
no  way  out   except  through  deeper   and   deeper 


240  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

draughts  of  its  own  poison.  He  fed  uncritically 
upon  whatever  came  in  his  way.  That  was  the 
inevitable  penalty  and  privilege  of  youth.  But 
though  he  had  enough  guidance  to  keep  him  free 
from  actual  coarseness,  he  was  left  to  run  into  the 
more  dangerous  shallows  of  vulgarity.  If  his  taste 
was  ever  to  improve  it  must  be  by  way  of  wading 
through  a  soft  bog  that  was  more  likely  to  sink  him 
altogether. 

In  the  event  he  carried  some  of  the  stains  with 
him  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  At  least  he  never  re 
covered  wholly  from  the  delay.  When  in  the  course 
of  time  his  mind  had  settled  into  the  stability  of 
rational  judgment  and  he  could  discriminate  and 
guide  himself,  he  was  by  that  very  fact  beyond  the 
plastic  moment  when  the  unconscious  impinge 
ments  of  his  attention  could  still  weave  the  native 
texture  of  his  mind.  By  that  time  its  warp  was 
already  set  and  its  pattern  sketched. 

As  it  was,  in  the  bright  monotony  of  the  read 
ings  of  those  years  he  fell  upon  that  last  word  of 
excess,  Les  Miserables,  more  pernicious  than  the 
inanities  of  his  earlier  indulgence  because  it  was 
the  product  of  genius.  Thereafter  his  world  of 
romance  was  lifted  into  a  still  higher  aloofness  from 
the  world  about  him.  In  this  state  he  remained  for 
a  year  or  two,  reading  further  but  often  coming 
back  to  its  pages  more  deeply  thrilled  by  its  repe 
tition  than  by  the  paler  though  newer  reflections  of 
its  spirit  from  other  surfaces.  It  was  consecrated 
by  a  solemnity  that  nothing  could  surpass,  neither 
in  heaven  nor  on  earth.  What  his  notion  of  life 
was  growing  to  be,  under  this  influence,  he  could 


The  Awkward  Age  241 

not  have  told  so  well  as  he  could  have  told  a  few 
years  before  in  his  brief  moments  of  rational  re 
volt.  His  mind  was  lulled  to  sleep.  He  had  no 
humor,  no  iron  in  his  soul. 

And  yet,  underneath,  the  suppressed  elements  of 
his  more  rational  nature  were  accruing.  The  oc 
casion  of  their  release  was  a  happy  one.  Perhaps 
nothing  could  have  better  served  to  bridge  the  wide 
gap  between  the  portentous  solemnity  of  his 
Miserables  years  and  the  more  balanced  years  that 
followed.  He  had  by  some  chance  never  been  to 
the  play.  The  isolation  of  his  native  town,  the 
principle  of  simplicity  in  his  early  breeding,  the 
enforced  simplicity  of  his  later  years  had  all  made 
against  it.  But  rumors  of  its  enchantments  had 
reached  him,  especially  in  that  long  period  in  which 
he  was  living  on  enchantments,  and  the  opportunity 
when  it  came  inevitably  drew  him. 

No  doubt  it  was  a  poor  enough  affair.  It  was 
an  open  air  performance  and  the  weather  came  off 
cold.  The  play  was  As  You  Like  It.  He  came  to 
it  from  among  his  sordid  streets  in  the  August 
twilight,  and  hung  about  the  still  closed  entrance 
impatient  of  delay  yet  excited  by  every  noise  and 
occurrence  that  seemed  part  of  the  awaited  event. 
He  paced,  eager  and  shivering  and  alone,  before 
the  gate,  listening  to  voices  behind  the  ticket 
window,  watching  the  muffled  figures  that  rolled  up 
in  carriages  and  disappeared  within.  He  entered 
at  last  with  a  thin  trickle  of  spectators,  and  sat 
with  them  under  the  trees  in  a  little  shivering  group 
before  the  rustic  stage.  Beyond  that  he  had  no 
further  recollection  of  them  or  of  their  world. 


242  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

They  no  longer  existed  around  him.  He  was  trans 
lated;  he  was  drunk  with  a  vision  of  a  world  that 
was  new  and  luminous.  There  was  no  illusion  here  as 
he  had  known  illusion  in  his  romances.  Here  was 
reality  before  him  to  hate,  to  pity,  and  to  love. 
And  he  hated,  he  pitied,  and  he  loved  it. 

On  the  chair  beneath  the  trees  sat  his  thin  body, 
its  legs  twisted  about  the  legs  of  the  chair,  its  hands 
deep  in  pockets,  and  its  collar  shiveringly  turned 
up.  But  he  did  not  know  it.  His  heart  was  in  the 
Forest  of  Arden.  It  was  a  real  world  of  feeling 
for  him,  and  where  yet  a  magic  and  nimble  wit, 
striking  in  him  a  quick  spark  of  response,  clarified 
the  turgid  flood  of  his  emotion.  There  was  here 
something  new  and  something  stirring.  His  young 
heart  thrilled  with  the  sudden  perceptions  of  his 
mind.  Though  he  seemed  not  to  have  lost  in  sym 
pathy,  nor  to  have  lost  his  own  part  in  the  magic 
events,  yet  he  found  himself  suddenly  aloof,  seeing 
through  and  through  the  hearts  and  minds  before 
him.  Clear  and  bright  colors  fell  upon  the  moving 
scene;  he  was  transposed;  a  new  lightness  of  heart 
seized  him.  Rosalind,  Touchstone,  Jacques  — 
they  were  beings  of  another  order  into  which  he 
had  but  now  been  born.  And  when  the  epilogue 
was  spoken,  and  the  bright  figures  had  disappeared 
into  the  dark  depths  of  the  forest,  he  sat  still  and 
expectant;  for  him  that  world  had  not  gone  out. 
Even  when  a  rough  hand  touched  his  shoulder  and 
turned  him  away,  he  obeyed  mechanically,  not 
seeing  that  the  others  were  gone  and  he  was  alone. 
He  walked  home  through  the  dark  streets  in  an 
airy  cloud,  and  his  feet  did  not  touch  the  hard 
stones. 


The  Awkward  Age  243 

Days  passed  before  he  again  felt  the  earth,  and 
he  welcomed  the  nights  when  he  could  lie  on  his 
pillow  and  live  again  without  interruption  in  the 
magic  world  of  his  new  discovery.  Something  had 
taken  place  in  his  mind  —  something  that  turned 
him  away  from  the  opacity  and  truculence  of 
Victor  Hugo.  Light  and  translucent,  the  new  world 
stimulated  him  as  the  old  world  had  lulled  him  to 
sleep.  He  lost  something  of  his  old  helplessness  in 
the  presence  of  feeling.  His  mind  was  pricked  into 
alertness,  and  in  his  new  responses  he  was  intoxi 
cated  with  a  new  joy.  At  home  in  a  dark  attic,  in 
a  heap  of  lumber,  he  found,  relic  of  more  pros 
perous  days,  a  pile  of  illustrated  folios  of  Shakes 
peare,  and  into  these  he  plunged  with  eagerness. 
There  was  much  that  he  did  not  understand,  but 
he  read  none  the  less  avidly,  with  now  and  then  a 
flash  of  delight  that  only  later  he  knew  to  be  the 
thrill  of  a  responsive  mind  to  the  stimulus  of  wit, 
the  leap  of  a  perception,  the  thrust  of  an  intuition. 
He  found  once  more,  after  a  dull  lapse,  the  power 
to  stand  aloof  above  his  feelings.  He  could  laugh 
again,  catching  the  irony  of  his  new  master.  In 
time,  to  be  sure,  the  first  brightness  of  his  new 
outlook  faded,  but  it  never  so  wholly  dulled  as  had 
his  early  religious  revolt.  It  had  more  food  to  sus 
tain  itself  with.  All  Shakespeare  lay  before  him, 
and  little  by  little  he  plowed  forward.  Then  he 
found  Scott;  and  Scott  lasted  him  till  he  was  wholly 
saved. 

But  though  he  read  his  new  authors,  and  ex 
ercised  with  them  a  clearer,  fuller  faculty  than  with 
the  old,  he  had  not  essentially  changed.  They  were 


244  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

still  for  him  an  opiate,  an  escape  from  his  sordid 
world.  He  was  still  a  passive  reader.  If  his  mind 
was  active  it  was  only  when  the  page  was  open 
before  him,  and  only  under  the  stimulus  of  de 
light.  It  was  only  receptive.  He  was  true  to  the 
beginnings  of  his  training,  and  though  his  tastes 
were  year  by  year  dedicating  him  to  a  preference 
for  what  had  at  one  time  been  called  the  scholarly 
life  —  a  life  guided  by  a  love  of  letters  —  his 
mental  habits  were  not  with  equal  steps  being 
stiffened  by  discipline  to  the  rigors  of  that  pur 
suit —  not  even  being  informed  that  it  had  rigors 
to  be  trained  for.  He  was  on  his  way  to  add  one 
more  to  that  modern  army  of  vagabonds  who 
wander  picturesquely  over  the  broad  highway  of 
letters,  revealing  their  soul's  adventures  with  a 
mountebank's  shameless  facility,  and  accorded  a 
happy  parasitic  living  by  a  public  eager  to  be 
amused  and  flattered. 

There  was  in  him,  however,  something  that  saved 
him  from  such  a  fate  in  the  end,  though  he  never 
wholly  recovered  from  the  long  years  of  passivity. 
It  was  high  time.  He  was  nearing  the  end  of  his 
early  youth.  When  youth  was  past  he  might,  it 
was  true,  add  to  his  knowledge,  but  the  cast  of  his 
mind  would  be  set,  and  the  subtle  mode  of  his 
thought  and  the  play  of  his  spirit  would  be  forever 
determined.  Shakespeare  and  Scott  had  done 
something  real  for  him,  joining  to  their  sentiment 
a  touch  of  rational  perception,  and  giving  him  a 
thirst  for  further  indulgence  in  his  growingly  con 
scious  faculty. 

They  were  not  wholly  gleaned  when  he  fell  upon 


The  Awkward  Age  245 

an  old  volume  of  Emerson.  It  was  one  of  the 
ironies  of  his  haphazard  development  that  it  should 
have  been  a  volume  of  the  vaguely  general  essays 
instead  of  the  Representative  Men,  and  it  diffused 
his  thoughts  skyward  into  the  rarefied  upper  alti 
tudes,  rather  than  laterally  over  the  tangible  sur 
face  of  history.  The  one  would  have  held  him  as 
well  as  the  other,  for  it  was  the  play  of  perception 
that  stimulated  him,  and  his  attention  might  have 
been  brought  to  more  and  ever  widening  human 
interests.  The  old  volume,  however,  brought  him 
to  something  that  he  had  not  experienced  since  the 
brief  candle  of  his  religious  revolt  had  guttered 
out.  It  brought  him  actively  to  exercise  his  own 
intelligence.  Like  St.  Francis  in  the  legend,  when 
he  came  upon  a  thought  that  struck  an  answering 
spark  in  him  he  would  close  the  book  and  read  no 
more,  but  sit  and  brood  upon  the  soaring  flight  of 
the  idea.  His  reflections  were  vague,  no  doubt, 
diffuse  stellar  fancies,  mystic  outreachings  into  the 
unknowable,  but  they  had  the  virtue  of  being  ac 
tive,  and  they  felt  the  restriction  of  needing  to 
seem  rational  and  explanatory. 

The  accident  that  brought  about  this  activity 
was  fortuitous  enough,  and  wasteful  enough.  It 
was  the  chance  of  a  sudden  storm  that  found  him 
the  Emerson  in  an  ancient  chest  of  scraps.  It  sent 
him  back  in  senseless  repetition  of  much  of  the 
first  period  of  his  adolescence  when  he  had  thrilled 
so  tremulously  at  the  impingement  of  beauty  in 
the  world  around  him.  But  it  added  something 
that  to  his  later  reflections  he  knew  to  be  the 
determinant  of  his  later  bent.  In  seeming  to  give 


246  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

an  explanation,  however  vague,  of  an  existence  of 
whose  mystery  he  was  growingly  conscious,  his 
winged  fancies  struck  in  him  a  new  and  strong 
gratification. 

His  new  experiences  were  extravagant.  His  un 
regulated  ardor  went  its  own  course.  Vaguely  but 
ardently  he  set  out  in  search  of  explanations.  With 
his  battered  Emerson  in  his  pocket,  and  with  a 
lightness  of  heart  and  keenness  of  interest  that  had 
known  no  intermission  since  his  starry  night  in  the 
Forest  of  Arden,  he  wandered  abroad  into  the  pied 
meadows  of  a  world  of  romantic  perceptions.  From 
what  ancient  springs  of  kinship  with  the  earth,  and 
what  heritage  of  natural  philosophy  in  the  depths 
of  his  common  nature  his  sudden  lore  sprang  he 
could  not  have  told.  But  his  Emerson  struck  in 
him  immediate  responses  of  acquiescence  and 
understanding  as  of  unguessed  memories  of  ancient 
revelation.  Romanticism,  he  knew  in  a  later 
period  when  he  had  had  the  advantages  of  a  com- 
pleter  aloofness  and  the  keener  irony  of  maturity, 
was  but  the  natural  philosophy  of  adolescence. 
But  at  the  time,  with  the  joy  of  adventure,  he  took 
it  for  humane  truth.  And  when  he  could  he  left 
the  contradictory  coil  and  trouble  of  the  town,  and 
hunted  for  it  in  the  acquiescence  of  the  woods 
beyond. 

He  felt  himself  vibrant  there  with  intense  and 
pleasurable  sensations  —  subtle  distinctions  of 
greens  on  the  tangled  floor,  sorrel  and  wort,  the 
leaf  of  the  violet  and  the  dog-tooth  lily;  the  varied 
patterns  of  branches  spread  against  the  sky,  the 
dense  texture  of  foliage  where  the  sun  struck  full 


The  Awkward  Age  247 

upon  distant  trees.  In  restful  silences  he  heard 
the  whispering  growth  of  the  grass,  the  feathery 
fall  of  limp  leaves,  the  movement  of  unseen  insects; 
he  caught  the  faint  sweet  odor  of  the  decaying  sod, 
and  felt  the  rising  coolness  of  the  ground  on*  his 
outstretched  hand.  He  seemed  to  himself  to  be  a 
part  of  the  consciousness  in  which  nature  realized 
her  own  existence. 

Such  romantic  indulgences  were  natural  enough 
to  his  youth,  though  for  him  they  were  a  part  of 
the  ground  he  had  covered  years  before.  They 
would  have  been  sufficiently  empty,  however,  if  an 
active  mind  in  him  had  not,  at  this  second  oc 
currence,  set  to  work  upon  a  troubling  observation 
that  recurred  again  and  again  to  baffle  him.  A 
sharp  separateness  forever  stood  between  his  own 
consciousness  and  the  moving  spirit  of  the  outer 
world.  He  rebelled.  He  rebelled  perhaps  the  more 
passionately  that  this  disturbing  sense  came  upon 
him  most  strongly  at  moments  when  his  identity 
with  that  world  seemed  to  him  most  yearningly  to 
be  desired  and  most  nearly  consummated  —  in 
moments  when  the  sight  or  sound  or  scent  of  touch 
ing  loveliness  moved  him  to  the  depths  of  his  soul. 
In  his  impotence,  at  such  supreme  moments,  to 
push  past  the  veil,  he  recognized  the  undertone  of 
sadness  that  forever  haunts  the  presence  of  beauty. 
He  failed  then,  signally  enough,  to  recognize  the 
incommensurable  duality  between  his  innermost 
consciousness  on  the  one  hand,  and  even  the  deepest 
reaches  of  his  senses  on  the  other.  But  he  was 
aware  of  his  own  failure  to  attain  that  identity  to 
/which  in  moments  of  emotion  he  seemed  to  come 


248  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

so  near.    And  he  tried  to  build  a  cosmology  that 
would  bridge  the  gulf. 

It  was  pleasurably  consistent  as  he  made  it  — 
this  cosmology.  It  brought  the  wide  compass  of 
his  observations  and  his  dreams  into  positions  in 
which  they  could  all  be  viewed  in  one  set  of  re 
lationships.  And  if  his  experience  of  life  was  meager, 
and  he  distinguished  imperfectly  between  the  con 
sistently  logical  and  the  empirically  real,  he  at 
least  was  doing  with  his  data  what  was  asked  of 
him  in  the  rules.  And  his  product  was  in  kind,  if 
not  in  depth,  like  that  of  his  master.  His  immor 
tality  of  development,  and  his  conception  of  evil 
as  but  milestones  on  the  endless  journey  to  per 
fection,  were  as  logical  as  the  logic  of  desire  ever  is. 

For  the  first  time  in  his  life,  now  that  he  had 
stepped  beyond  the  companionship  of  his  authors, 
he  felt  the  need  of  someone  to  share  his  dreams. 
There  seemed  a  kind  of  futility  in  their  isolation 
in  his  own  mind.  He  was  not  long  in  finding  others 
of  the  same  bent,  products  of  the  same  age  and  the 
same  youthfulness.  Together  they  strayed  afield, 
and  sitting  on  some  bank  sang,  a  little  consciously, 
but  earnestly  and  with  justifying  heartiness,  their 
prose  eclogues  of  nature  and  immortality,  ridicu 
lous  and  divine.  Or  on  long  winter  evenings  within 
doors  they  soared  into  an  empyrean  where  after 
the  end  of  this  life's  possibilities  they  were  again 
to  take  up  their  thrilling  journey. 

How  long  this  enthusiasm  would  have  lasted  he 
had  some  indications  from  the  cooling  subsidence  of 
their  later  meetings.  It  was  not  from  his  sense 
that  the  truth  of  these  dreams  had  faded,  but  that 


The  Awkward  Age  249 

in  the  end  the  conferences  grew  thin  with  the  ex 
haustion  of  matter.  They  had  reached  the 
end  of  their  tether,  and  having  established  a  vast 
cosmos  they  found  little  left  to  do  but  live  their 
lives  in  the  light  of  its  settled  relations.  But  this 
life  itself  was  the  dull  life  of  poverty,  narrowed  to 
an  earthly  routine,  and  his  mind  was  active,  and 
hungry  for  stuff  to  feed  upon.  After  his  seductive 
taste  of  ambrosia  he  was  restive  under  an  earthly 
dietary.  He  had  drunken  of  a  divine  nectar  and 
the  waters  of  the  kitchen  tap  were  flat  in  his  mouth. 
He  began  to  suffer  under  the  romantic  irony. 

He  was  saved  from  a  despondent  reaction,  how 
ever,  by  a  circumstance  to  which  his  unballasted 
condition  had  made  him  peculiarly  liable.  Before 
the  meetings  had  become  quite  graveled  for  matter 
they  were  heard  of  by  an  elder  of  active  intelli 
gence,  who  had  wind  of  their  speculative  activity 
and  found  it  sufficiently  interesting  to  attract  his 
sympathy  and  curiosity.  He  made  occasion  to  meet 
them  in  his  library,  and  with  the  spell  of  his  own 
intelligence  and  in  the  seductive  atmosphere  of  books 
and  learning  which  the  young  vagrant  breathed 
again  in  grateful  remembrance,  he  released  the 
checks  of  a  new  explosion.  Whether  by  virtue  of 
an  acutely  planned  attack,  or  by  virtue  of  a  pregnant 
state  of  mind  in  the  youth,  it  was  accomplished  with 
the  sureness  and  precision  of  time  as  the  clock  moved 
from  evening  to  the  small  hours  of  a  summer's 
dawn.  The  vast,  complex  flower  of  a  new  concep 
tion  grew  visibly  in  his  mind,  unfolding  between 
sunset  and  sunrise. 

In  all  his  readings  he  had  come  upon  little  or 


250  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

nothing  to  put  him  in  touch  with  the  dominant 
thought  of  his  own  day.  Science  was  a  word  among 
other  words,  with  no  more  quickening  life  for  him 
than  many  another ;  and  evolution  had  never  stirred 
in  him  even  an  echo  of  the  cry  that  was  ringing  in 
the  world  about  him.  Whether  it  could  ever  have 
effected  in  him  the  intoxication  of  that  night  if  he 
had  plodded  to  it  through  years  of  slow  development 
is  doubtful.  As  it  was,  suddenly  but  systematically 
unfolded  before  him,  petal  by  petal  with  a  thousand 
deft  touches  as  the  hours  flashed  by  him  unheeded, 
it  made  him  drunk.  He  saw  suddenly  the  vast  cos 
mology  of  his  romantic  speculations  melt  away  into 
the  vague  azure  unknown  beyond  the  skies.  And 
the  bright  apex  of  his  system,  that  had  shone  there 
so  vividly,  its  rays  diverging  downward  upon  all 
that  he  knew  and  all  that  he  could  ever  know,  he 
saw  now  to  be  but  an  ignis  jatuus  of  his  own  mind. 
There  was  a  sharp  pain  in  his  heart,  an  hour  of 
poignant,  clinging  regret;  and  then  the  new  light 
flooded  in  upon  him  and  dazzled  him. 

He  saw  now  that  men  themselves  stood  by  the 
apex  of  light,  and  that  all  the  illumination  there  was 
in  the  dark  world  diverged  outward  from  men's 
minds  till  it  was  extinguished  at  the  vague  frontiers 
of  empirical  knowledge.  He  saw,  suddenly  revealed 
in  the  magic  of  a  word,  the  slow  growth,  through 
the  ages  of  the  past,  of  nebulae,  of  worlds,  of  or 
ganic  life,  of  intelligence,  of  civilization.  In  man 
he  saw  the  growth  of  all  the  knowledge  there  was, 
groping  its  way  through  the  humble  senses  to  wider 
and  wider  acquaintance  with  the  knowable,  till  men 
stood  in  humility  before  the  vast,  acknowledged  un- 


The   Awkward   Age  251 

known.  Such  were  the  Spencerian  terms  of  his  new 
revelation. 

The  vision  crashed  sensibly  through  his  brain, 
and  dazzled  him  with  a  blinding  light.  He  groped 
his  way  home,  unconscious  of  his  companions,  in  a 
luminous  halo.  Echoes  of  the  evening  were  bidding 
him  take  his  place  in  the  devoted  army  of  martyrs 
who  strove  up  the  misty  mountains  of  knowledge, 
humbly  hopeful  of  a  moment's  fitful  view  of  higher 
peaks  beyond,  and  humbly  grateful  if  in  the  end, 
weary  and  broken,  they  might  die  clasping  to  their 
breasts  a  feather  fallen  from  the  wings  of  truth. 
Whether  he  slept  he  could  not  tell.  His  dreams  and 
his  waking  thoughts  were  alike.  And  though  he 
arose  next  day  and  went  through  the  routine  of  his 
old  habits,  the  light  still  dazzled  him,  glowing 
brightly  in  the  periphery  of  his  vision. 

Slowly  the  personal  significance  of  his  counter- 
conversion  sank  in  upon  his  mind.  He  gave  up  his 
Christianity  —  even  the  vague  pantheism  into  which 
it  had  latterly  grown.  But  he  had  no  regrets.  He 
gave  over  the  aesthetic  contemplation  of  his  late  cos 
mology  for  a  militant  atheism  that  for  the  moment 
saw  no  humor  in  his  scoffing  ironies,  so  soon  had  he 
forgotten  the  gentler  faith.  He  visited  churches  to 
witness  the  weak  foibles  of  kneeling  believers.  He 
wrangled  with  his  betters,  and  came  off  with  the 
easy  victory  of  the  scoffer.  He  abandoned  his  old 
reading  with  a  sudden  sense  that  it  was  archaic, 
based  on  an  old  and  naive  conception  of  men  and 
Providence.  And  he  took  up  with  current  writers 
whose  daring  pleased  his  strident  revolt.  In  a  word 
he  went  through  in  pathetic  miniature  the  spiritual 


252  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

history  of  the  half  century  that  was  getting  on  to 
its  last  decade. 

There  was  here,  without  doubt,  some  gain  for 
him.  He  had  lost  his  isolation.  He  no  longer 
climbed  into  his  ivory  tower,  but  stalked  up  and 
down  the  highway  with  his  bat  upon  his  neck,  ready 
for  adventure  —  a  knight  errant  in  spirited  defiance 
of  the  dragon  superstition.  He  seemed  to  have 
found  the  formula  of  life.  The  word  evolution 
seemed  to  flash  upon  him  the  past  foreshortened 
into  a  single  perspective  behind  him,  and  the  future 
hi  to  a  single  perspective  before  him.  It  was  all 
very  simple. 

In  time,  however,  he  found  it  fraught  with  more 
difficulties  than  seemed  reasonable  to  his  moments 
of  contemplation.  He  found  in  himself  a  multitude 
of  ignorances  that  shamed  him.  His  mere  enthu 
siasm  was  not  enough  to  convert  others  whose  eyes 
were  set  on  other  vistas.  He  needed  more  knowl 
edge..  And  he  found  in  himself,  too,  as  months  went 
on  and  he  came  to  old  roads  where  his  feet  had 
often  trod,  traitorous  sympathies  that  made  him 
hesitate.  Old  faiths,  old  feelings,  old  enthusiasms, 
that  had  lain  asleep  in  his  mind  awoke  at  discon 
certing  moments  and  pleaded  their  claims  with  him. 
They  pleaded  the  more  effectively  when  he  came 
one  day  upon  a  persuasive  voice  that  touched,  with 
perhaps  a  questionable  but  no  less  disconcerting 
logic,  a  foible  in  his  latest  militancy.  This  voice 
echoed  the  doubt  that  all  beliefs  were  but  the 
products  of  the  passional  nature.  And  when  he 
examined  his  own  new  belief,  conscious  of  his  own 
ignorance,  he  found  that  for  himself,  whatever  the 


The  Awkward  Age  253 

general  truth  or  falsity  of  the  doctrine,  the  doubt 
was  justified.  His  last  belief,  like  its  predecessor, 
had  been  won  by  his  enthusiasm.  It  was  not  built 
upon  that  empirical  knowledge  that  it  postulated  as 
the  one  thing  worthy  of  respect.  Whether  he  was 
in  any  worse  case,  philosophically  speaking,  than  the 
great  prophets  of  that  movement  he  did  not  inquire. 
For  his  own  part  he  was  no  better  in  relation  to  his 
new  scientific  cosmology  than  to  his  older  romantic 
one.  He  had  accepted  the  one,  as  he  had  accepted 
the  other,  from  a  passionate  need  to  orientate  him 
self.  He  was  logical  in  his  bent.  But  now  his  logic 
confuted  him. 

He  awakened  to  a  longing  for  more  knowledge 
and  more  guidance.  His  friend,  the  mentor  of  his 
last  conversion,  urged  him  toward  science.  But 
when  he  saw  before  him  the  vista  of  years  spent  in 
minute  search  for  the  details  of  physical  fact,  some 
thing  within  him  revolted.  He  began  to  see  dimly 
that  science  itself,  for  all  its  prophets,  did  not  solve 
the  problem  he  was  interested  in.  After  all,  science 
was  only  a  body  of  human  knowledge.  And  though 
men  should  in  time  know  infinitely  more  than  they 
knew  now,  there  would  still  be  the  humane  problem 
of  how  they  should  use  their  knowledge.  Not  in 
clear  terms,  but  gropingly,  he  apprehended  that  the 
central  human  problem  was  the  problem  of  the  eli 
gible  life,  and  that  at  its  utmost  science  was  but  one 
contribution  to  it.  He  was  interested  in  that  central 
thing  in  the  human  universe  —  humanity  itself. 
Only  years  later  did  he  see  how  right  he  had  been  in 
his  young  intuition  that,  for  all  the  room  science  was 
taking  in  the  world,  it  was,  humanly  speaking,  but 


254  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

the  servant,  precise  and  reliable,  of  the  moral  part 
of  human  nature. 

Now,  however,  he  mistrusted  his  perceptions. 
And  his  passion  for  the  center  not  only  kept  him 
from  being  contented  with  a  pursuit  of  the  details 
of  scientific  knowledge,  but  deprived  him  of  the 
guidance  of  the  best  minds  around  him.  He  could 
not  know  then,  as  he  knew  years  later,  the  malady 
of  which  he  was  sick  —  that  something  in  his  native 
bent  and  in  the  accidents  of  his  experience  had  put 
him  out  of  tune  with  his  time,  had  given  him  a 
passion  for  the  general  in  an  age  of  the  particular, 
and  for  the  humane  and  moral  in  an  age  of  the 
physical.  And  his  training  had  given  him  neither 
the  data  to  satisfy  his  bent  nor  the  habit  of  concen 
tration,  of  disciplined  patience,  of  systematic  pro 
cedure,  that  should  give  substantial  body  to  the  ab 
stractions  of  his  thought. 

And  so,  without  guidance,  and  vaguely  troubled, 
he  sank  back  into  his  old  desultory  reading.  Even 
his  reading,  after  his  disappointments  and  disillu- 
sionments,  had  lost  something  of  its  old  power 
with  him.  He  seemed,  in  his  shallow  experience,  to 
have  plunged  into  life  and  to  have  emerged  with  a 
sense  of  its  emptiness.  But  he  was  still  young,  and 
at  the  bottom  of  his  heart  there  clung  a  hope  that 
refused  the  doubts  of  his  experience.  Somewhere 
there  must  be  a  center,  and  a  knowledge  of  the 
center,  and  a  guidance  that  could  lead  him  on  the 
high  path  of  those  longings  that  so  persisted  in  the 
mysterious  depths  of  his  spirit. 


Ill 

PSEUDODOXIA  EPIDEMIC  A 

THEY  were  undergraduates,  and  their  experi 
ence  was  that  they  did  not  fit,  that  they  were 
not  taken  care  of.  The  significance  of  their  case 
lay  in  the  fact  that  they  were,  as  distinguished  from 
others  who  seemed  to  fit  so  well  and  to  be  so  well 
cared  for,  just  those  for  whom  that  care  might  have 
been  supposed  to  be  calculated.  As  for  them,  to 
begin  with  they  were  willing  enough  to  fit,  anxious 
enough  to  be  taken  care  of.  What  else  could  have 
been  the  content  of  the  thrill  of  one  of  them,  who 
might  have  been  any  one  of  them  so  typical  was  he 
of  the  rest,  as  he  first  neared  the  college  campus 
and  caught  the  gleam  of  roofs  above  its  treetops? 

It  was  late  September,  and  cold,  and  a  northeast 
wind  pushed  the  drippings  of  his  umbrella  against 
his  face.  The  wide,  empty  suburban  streets  were 
washed  clean,  and  gleamed  darkly  under  the  gray 
sky.  Other  figures  passed  him  now  and  again,  mere 
wind-whipped  vehicles  for  umbrellas  —  rapt,  self- 
centered.  He  too  was  rapt,  but  outwardly,  and  he 
stood  minute  after  minute  unable,  or  unwilling,  to 
break  the  spell  that  bound  him.  Gleaming  gray 
sky,  gleaming  gray  streets,  the  rain  drifting  heavily 
southward;  before  him  the  drenched  green  of  the 
campus  and  the  solid  red  of  aspiring  roofs  —  there 


256  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

they  were  before  him,  and  there  was  he  —  face  to 
face,  the  seeker  and  the  sought.  There  was  no 
other  content  to  the  spell,  no  other  content  in  the 
seeker's  mind.  While  it  lasted  there  was  for  him  no 
beyond.  It  was  a  supreme  moment.  To  move 
would  have  been  to  take  a  step  into  the  future,  to 
begin  a  new  and  uncertain  course  toward  an  uncon- 
ceived  goal.  To  stand  still  was  to  prolong  the  mo 
ment  of  ultimate  achievement.  No  doubt  to  turn 
back  now  would  have  been  to  cancel  the  validity  of 
the  moment  —  so  much  of  futurity  lay  in  the  -spell 
that  held  him  —  but  the  value  of  the  moment  lay 
in  its  perfect  culmination  of  the  past.  It  was  the 
moment  itself,  not  the  future  consequences  of  it, 
that  brought  fulfillment  to  the  yearnings  and  hopes 
that  had  been  his  for  so  long.  They  were  full  to  the 
brim  in  his  sense  that  at  last  he  had  come  to  college. 
The  time  came  when  the  moment  could  hold  no 
more;  and  when  he  finally  moved  from  the  spot  it 
was  a  movement  into  the  future.  That  he  moved 
forward  was  a  confession  of  faith,  a  confession  of 
his  anxiety  to  be  taken  care  of.  Above  everything 
else  he  needed  to  be  taken  care  of,  for  he  had  re 
sponded,  with  an  innocence  that  made  his  abandon 
dangerous,  to  many  of  the  subtle  whisperings  of  the 
time  spirit,  and  he  now  stood  at  the  gate  of  his 
college  far  more  really  adrift  than  he  had  seemed 
even  in  the  whim  of  his  fanciful  musings.  For  his 
time  had  fallen  at  the  end  of  the  century,  and  he 
was  sensitive  enough  to  its  spirit  to  have  registered 
in  his  own  soul  many  of  its  sweeping  negations.  If 
he  had  had  the  momentum  of  strong  family  tradition 
he  might  have  rounded  this  headland  with  its  cross 


Pseudodoxia  Epidemica  257 

currents  and  shifting  gusts,  and  caught  the  breeze 
again  within  the  haven  of  the  college.  But  he  was 
average  American  enough  to  have  inherited  no  cul 
tural  traditions  that  could  carry  him  here.  At  home 
on  the  paternal  shelves  he  had  seen  from  childhood 
respectable  ranks  of  books,  but  the  Liddell  and 
Scott,  and  the  Xenophon  there,  more  worn  of  covers 
than  of  contents,  had  as  yet  come  to  mean  no  more 
to  him  than  long  ago  had  meant  the  A-ANA, 
ANA-ATH,  ATH-BOI  of  the  Britannica  that  he 
had  learnt  from  long  gazing  before  he  had  mastered 
his  school  primer.  As  for  the  rest  it  was  significant 
of  the  vagueness  of  the  family  tradition  that  Shake 
speare  and  Hugo  and  Sir  Walter  were  left  to  span 
the  gap  between  Xenophon  and  a  battered  volume 
of  Emerson. 

There  was,  however,  a  Xenophon,  and  perhaps 
still  enough  of  what  had  brought  it  there  to  have 
kept  him  from  filling  out  his  notion  of  "education" 
wholly  at  the  suggestion  of  the  time  spirit.  He  was, 
none  the  less,  susceptible  enough  to  have  been 
thrilled  with  the  spell  of  the  word  itself  without 
reference  to  its  content.  It  was  an  open  sesame, 
the  more  powerful  that  its  possibilities  were  so 
hidden.  But  if  it  lacked  substance  it  was  rich  in  a 
peculiar  connotation  that  had  grown  out  of  the  life 
that  had  fallen  to  his  lot  —  a  life  of  poverty  and 
family  failure  that  had  found  its  consolation  in  an 
escape,  more  or  less  perfect,  though  doubtless  tinged 
with  the  futility  of  self-deception,  into  the  limbo  of 
the  imagination.  Poverty  and  failure  had  drawn 
him  into  an  isolation  that  had  left  him  no  alternative 
but  books;  and  books,  indiscriminately  devoured, 


258  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

had  led  his  escape  through  bright  ways  so  remote 
as  to  deepen  the  sordidness  of  that  world  that  had 
thrust  him  aside.  On  the  one  hand  had  been  toil 
that  brought  no  rewards,  and  material  anxieties  that 
were  none  the  less  real  that  the  stakes  were  so 
pitiably  small;  on  the  other  a  spacious  region  in 
which  was  set  free  in  him  every  yearning  of  affection, 
every  ardor  of  will,  every  energy  of  imagination, 
that  the  real  world  so  effectively  thwarted.  Latterly 
too,  as  the  thought  of  college  had  grown  into  the 
hope  of  a  permanent  and  material  escape,  the  real 
world  and  its  toil  had  sunk  to  the  status  of  a  mere 
means.  What  wonder  that  the  real  world  had  grown 
dim,  or  that  that  other  world,  animated  for  him  at 
least  by  every  natural  exercise  of  his  spirit,  had 
grown  more  humanly  real? 

If  in  this  plight  he  had  built  up  for  the  word  a 
connotation  that  had  for  him  no  content  of  definite 
meaning,  he  had  at  least  this  advantage  from  his 
vagueness  —  that  he  had  not  filled  it  with  a  meaning 
definitely  false.  However  much  he  shared  with 
others  of  his  time  the  idea  that  education  meant  a 
way  out,  the  way  out  for  him  had  come  to  be  by 
the  gate  of  the  spirit,  never  as  with  others  by  way 
of  that  material  world  that  had  grown  so  dim  to 
him.  If  he  had,  by  the  failure  of  family  tradition, 
no  clear  sense  of  the  road  that  would  take  him  into 
the  region  of  the  spirit,  he  at  least  had  no  tempta 
tion  to  follow  those  clearly  marked  as  leading  some 
where  else.  That  he  had  no  clear  sense  of  his  own 
road,  however,  was  not  a  matter  to  daunt  him  now, 
for  his  faith  was  unshaken  in  the  willingness  and 
competence  to  guide  him  of  those  who  had  that 


Pseudodoxia  Epidemica  259 

guidance  in  trust.  Thus  much  of  definite  content 
had  come  to  him  in  the  word  "college"  —  perhaps 
from  the  battered  Emerson  —  that  its  very  reason 
for  being  was  that  it  stood  in  the  midst  of  the  tur 
moil  of  material  life  to  guide  its  voluntary  entrants 
into  the  life  of  the  spirit.  So  he  had  gone,  when  the 
opportunity  came,  to  a  college  that  had  as  yet  few 
temptations  for  those  whose  chosen  way  out  lay 
through  the  acquisitive  vocations,  and  he  found  him 
self  now  at  last  on  the  very  threshold  of  that  new 
life. 

In  another  respect,  however,  he  was  not  so  free 
from  the  spell  of  the  time  spirit;  and  if  he  had  re 
frained  from  filling  the  word  "education"  with  a 
worldly  content  by  escaping  the  spell  in  one  of  its 
aspects,  he  had  emptied  it  of  a  possible  spiritual 
content  by  falling  under  the  spell  in  another.  Re 
ligion  had  for  him,  as  for  his  whole  generation, 
passed  into  quiescence.  It  was,  perhaps,  in  his  con 
sciousness  of  the  loss  rather  than  in  the  loss  itself 
that  his  case  was  in  any  way  notable.  The  spell  was 
general  enough;  to  know  that  you  were  under  it  was 
the  rare  feat.  No  doubt  his  family  tradition  was 
operative  here,  for  there  had  been  ministers  of  the 
church  so  continuously  in  the  known  history  of  the 
family  as  at  one  time  to  have  created  the  surmise 
that  he  might  inherit  the  ministry  together  with  the 
churchly  name  that  had  come  to  him  from  his  ma 
ternal  grandfather.  He  was,  as  a  consequence,  sen 
sitively  aware  of  the  passing  of  the  religious  spirit. 
Others  there  undoubtedly  were  to  whom  religion  had 
always  been  vague  or  merely  formal,  and  for  whom 
the  vast  inheritance  of  organization,  of  institution, 


260  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

and  more  effectively  of  vocabulary  and  childhood 
association,  still  sufficed  to  give  them  all  the  religion 
of  which  they  had  ever  been  aware.  To  him,  how 
ever,  came  the  sharp  consciousness  of  the  passing 
of  that  spirit  both  from  his  own  outlook  upon  life 
and  from  that  of  the  generality  about  him.  It  had 
come  first,  this  realization,  with  a  struggle  in  which 
it  was  thrust  aside  and  apparently  stifled.  But  the 
struggle  had  not  been  without  its  fruits  in  an  ulti 
mate  and  shocking  counter-conversion  that  had  car 
ried  him,  until  its  force  was  expended,  into  the 
militant  ranks  of  the  opposition.  That  he  had  be 
fore  long  retired  from  the  fight  was  due,  as  he  him 
self  came  to  realize,  to  that  persistent  habit  of  mind 
which  in  secular  matters  so  closely  allied  his  hopes 
and  ambitions  to  things  of  the  spirit.  But  however 
time  had  mollified  the  militant  combativeness  of  his 
rationalism,  he  never  again  lost  his  rational  point  of 
view. 

For  him,  therefore,  whose  vague  notion  of  edu 
cation  was  at  the  other  extreme  from  the  practical, 
and  whose  religion  had  weakened  and  died,  and 
whose  traditions  were  so  at  a  loss  beyond  the  pale 
of  vocation  and  religion,  the  situation  would  have 
seemed  dire  had  he  not  in  his  youth  and  inexperience 
put  so  implicit  a  faith  in  the  identity  of  the  college 
with  that  secular  inner  life  that  had  become  so  real 
to  him.  What  wonder,  therefore,  as  he  stood  on 
the  threshold  filled  with  a  faith  so  far  more  in 
spiring  than  knowledge,  that  the  moment  was  one 
of  supreme  consummation!  The  uncertainty  that 
had  oppressed  the  hopes  of  the  immediate  past  and 
weighted  with  doubt  the  only  motives  that  had  en- 


Pseudodoxia  Epidemica  261 

nobled  it,  at  last  had  a  refutation  too  dramatic,  too 
tangibly  set  forth  in  the  event  itself,  to  let  it  be  any 
thing  less  than  supreme.  If  an  enticing  sun  had 
made,  at  this  first  moment,  the  view  before  him  the 
common  visual  property  of  other  passers,  or  had 
lured  thither  the  sophisticated  habitues  to  whom  it 
was  as  an  old  story,  loved  but  unheeded,  the  moment 
might  have  been  a  less  perfect  dramatization  of  the 
event  in  his  own  mind.  But  as  it  was,  the  very 
solitude  of  his  possession  —  fit  climax  of  the  solitude 
of  his  hopes  —  constituted  its  dramatic  fitness.  It 
was  of  a  piece  with  what  had  gone  before.  Hence 
forth,  no  doubt,  he  would  share  it  with  others;  now, 
cleared  of  extraneous  detail,  green  and  gray  and 
red,  against  the  ominously  gleaming  gray  of  sky 
and  rain-swept  streets,  it  was  there  for  him.  It 
was,  until  the  moment  overflowed,  his  alone. 

So  innocent  a  faith  he  had  that  he  would  be  taken 
care  of,  and  so  ignorant  was  he  of  what  that  care 
should  be,  that  it  was  not  until  he  found  himself, 
a  year  later,  at  the  same  spot,  that  the  beginnings  of 
doubt  assailed  him.  What  —  he  came  to  ask  in  the 
shock  of  that  vivified  memory  —  was  it  all  making 
for,  this  diversity?  For  he  still  clung  to  his  vision 
of  the  inner  life,  and  to  the  hope,  not  yet  dulled,  but 
not  yet  confirmed,  that  the  college  might  solidify 
his  fluid  sense  that  there  was  something  there  to 
build  up.  But  he  saw  now  that  though  he  had  done 
well  all  that  had  been  asked  of  him,  and  lent  himself 
eagerly  to  the  unrelated  tasks  that  had  come  one  at 
a  time  to  his  hand,  he  was  still  as  vague,  as  to  end 
and  means,  in  his  sophomoric  sophistication,  as  he 
had  been  in  his  pathetic  freshman  ardor. 


262  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

His  sophomoric  confidence,  however,  was  not 
proof  against  the  uncertainties  of  the  situation.  The 
prodigious  array  of  "courses"  which  in  printed 
schedule  bulged  his  pocket  served  only  to  heighten 
the  feebleness  of  the  hope  that  something  would 
emerge  to  which  his  separate  tasks  were  contrib 
uting.  That  nothing  had  emerged  he  was  fully 
aware,  but  in  his  sophomoric  contempt  he  could 
have  forgiven  his  freshman  futility  if  he  could  have 
felt  a  trust  that  the  courses  he  was  now  to  choose 
would  even  dimly  make  for  a  satisfaction  of  the 
longings  that  still  dogged  him.  He  knew  that  if  he 
had  wanted  to  enter  the  law,  or  medicine,  or  en 
gineering,  or  any  of  those  professions  that  seemed 
to  him  but  the  intensification  of  that  real  world 
which  he  wanted  so  to  rise  above,  he  could  have 
found  schools  to  guide  him  with  advice  —  advice 
which  he  might  not  have  understood  but  which  none 
the  less  he  would  have  obeyed  with  the  same  faith 
that  had  been  so  insufficiently  fed  by  the  college  he 
had  chosen.  Not  that  he  had  even  now  a  clear 
sense  of  what  perplexed  him;  he  only  knew  that  he 
might  have  made  his  choice  from  that  array  in  the 
bulging  schedule  less  blindly  if  he  had  had  even  a 
dim  feeling  for  some  structure  to  which  his  choice 
was  to  contribute.  He  felt  the  gnawing  discontent 
of  aimlessness. 

His  subsequent  selections,  far  from  quieting  this 
unrest,  only  served  to  heighten  it.  For  he  had  gone 
to  the  kindly  dean  with  longings  too  inarticulate  in 
his  own  mind  to  be  worded  in  the  bustling  publicity 
of  the  "office,"  and  within  the  crowded  minutes  his 
numbered  ticket  allotted  him.  In  the  hour  of  wait- 


Pseudodoxia  Epidemica  263 

ing  in  line  he  attained  in  the  presence  of  those 
others  to  a  sense  of  the  official  impersonality  of  even 
his  own  affairs.  The  mechanism  of  this  collegiate 
machine  loomed  before  him  so  depersonalized  as  to 
make  an  emotional  appeal  a  mere  impertinence.  In 
elaborating  itself  for  the  personal  service  of  the  in 
dividual  youth  whom  it  hoped  to  enrich  in  the  end 
with  a  personality,  it  seemed  somehow  to  have 
attained  to  an  entity  to  which  the  youth  himself  be 
came  merely  provender.  Who  was  he,  in  response 
to  the  tonsorial  "next"  that  summoned  him  into  the 
presence,  however  kindly,  of  the  clerical  dean, — 
who  was  he,  to  interrupt  the  regularity  of  that  busi 
nesslike  procession  with  a  passionate  appeal  for  a 
philosophy  of  life!  And  if  the  dean  found  no  fault 
with  the  casual  choice  marked  down  on  the  busi 
nesslike  card  before  him,  how  was  he  to  know  how 
casual,  how  blind,  that  choice  had  been?  He  too 
was  but  a  servant  of  that  machine,  not  chosen  to 
impart  to  each  successive  entrant  in  his  morning's 
work  a  philosophic  outlook. 

But  for  our  youth,  the  sense  that  he  had  com 
mitted  himself  for  months  to  come,  for  a  precious 
fraction  of  the  whole  time  his  college  was  to  do  so 
much  for  him  in,  to  a  choice  that  had  been  so  casual, 
so  blind,  heightened  the  unrest  that  the  retrospect 
of  his  first  year  had  already  stirred  in  him.  That 
the  separate  studies  themselves  were  unable  to  help 
him  he  was  by  now  dimly  aware.  They  fell  apart 
one  from  another;  they  refused  to  cohere.  In 
ternally  each  was  self-sufficient  enough,  carefully 
labeled,  and  rounded  out  by  an  examination;  but 
the  examination  might  be  the  valedictory  to  all  the 


264  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

knowledge  and  wisdom  the  course  contained.  After 
the  valedictory  each  might  be  forgotten.  The  whole 
that  was  to  be  attained  was  not  a  structure;  it  was 
not  even  an  accumulation;  it  was  only  a  book 
keeper's  record  of  "having  had"  successively,  for  a 
moment  each,  a  sufficient  number  of  parts.  Our  un 
happy  youth  was  as  yet,  however,  unaware  of  the 
more  general  case.  That  the  kindly  dean  of  the 
college  —  the  college  that  existed  only  to  guide  men 
to  the  life  of  the  spirit  —  had  help  for  others,  but 
had  none  for  those  whose  generous  desire  was  to 
enter  that  life,  had  not  as  yet  stirred  in  him  the 
bitter  smile  which  before  the  end  came  to  be  his 
habitual  response  to  all  laudations  of  the  college. 
He  could  only  feel  the  baffling  pain  of  not  having 
got  what  he  could  not  have  denned. 

If,  however,  discontent  at  his  displacement  cut 
him  off  from  associations  that  arise  from  community 
of  work  and  enthusiasms,  he  fell  heir  to  others  tra 
ditionally  more  prolific  of  ardent  friendship  —  those 
that  arise  through  community  of  disaffection.  In 
the  emptiness  of  his  life  he  had  clung  to  what  had 
given  him  his  first  feeling  for  the  distinction  between 
the  haphazard  life  around  him  and  the  more  stable 
life  of  the  spirit.  He  still  read  in  his  old  objectless, 
unguided,  desultory  way,  in  the  literature  of  his  own 
tongue,  and  had  insensibly  drifted  into  the  elaborate 
department  of  his  college  that  concerned  itself  with 
that  literature.  And  there  it  was  that  he  fell  in 
with  others  whose  tempers  and  hopes  and  experi 
ences  and  disappointments  were  so  like  his  own 
that  their  mutual  sympathy  was  spontaneous  and 
lasting.  That  their  association  was  so  lasting  was 


Pseudodoxia  Epidemica  265 

due,  as  they  came  to  realize,  to  the  circumstance 
that  they  remained  to  the  end  so  obstinately  un 
digested  a  particle  in  the  inwards  of  their  college. 

In  one  sense  they  were  happier  than  most  of  their 
fellows  —  in  the  way  of  friendship  —  and  that 
atoned  for  much.  They  went  to  fetes,  and  laughed 
with  their  acquaintances,  sang  and  smoked,  and  were 
happy  on  the  surface  —  even  below  the  surface,  in 
the  possession  of  that  friendship  that  was  the  most 
permanant  thing  that  came  to  them  from  their  col 
legiate  years.  There  was,  no  doubt,  as  much  ac 
cident  in  their  first  meeting  as  usually  goes  to  the 
happy  or  unhappy  incidents  of  life;  but  they  came 
to  feel  a  kind  of  beneficent  fatality  in  the  circum 
stance  that  seemed  to  rescue  them  so  consciously 
from  the  futility  of  the  college  itself.  There  were 
three  or  four  or  five  of  them,  with  the  dubious  ad 
vantage  of  a  community  of  poverty.  But  they  had 
other  genuine  advantages;  one  of  them  had  a  talent 
for  friendship,  another  for  trenchant  analysis  and 
criticism,  another  for  happy  irony,  and  another  for 
sensitive  appreciation.  So  happy  a  combination  of 
qualities  —  and  even  their  poverty  might  be  called 
happy  in  isolating  them  and  keeping  them  from 
eking  out  the  emptiness  of  their  college  life  with 
purchasable  gayeties  —  such  a  happy  combination 
made  their  intimate  life  incomparably  rich. 

It  was  a  life  of  daily  association,  with  a  routine 
of  habit  and  custom  that  kept  it  from  morbidity. 
There  were  long  Saturdays  that  took  them,  week 
after  week,  the  rounds  of  the  second-hand  book 
shops,  picking  up  here  and  there  what  their  meager 
purses  could  afford  of  old  writers  whom  they  had 


266  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

come,  in  their  evenings  of  reading,  to  love  as  much 
for  their  present  association  as  for  their  intrinsic 
worth.  There  were  dingy  cafes,  where  the  waiters 
came  to  know  their  favorite  dishes  and  comment  on 
their  occasional  absences,  and  where  they  spent  long 
mealtimes  bandying  passages  from  their  day's  finds, 
and  munching  those  unbelievable  pastries  called 
Bismarcks.  There  was  the  impossibly  remote  top 
gallery  at  the  symphony  concert,  where  they  found 
themselves,  for  the  moment,  landed  on  the  coast  of 
an  alluring  Bohemia,  urban  neighbor  of  Arcadia. 
There  were,  in  defiance  of  to-morrow's  lessons,  long 
evenings  of  reading  and  Broseley's  churchwardens, 
and  midnights  of  wildest  metaphysics  when  even 
the  dormitory  lay  in  silence;  and  late  strolls  on  the 
lake  shore  where  the  glare  of  distant  iron  mills 
dimmed  the  stars  and  cast  a  ghostly  light  on  the 
breakers  that  roared  at  their  feet. 

Through  it  all  ran  the  stirrings  of  generous  friend 
ship,  which  had  for  a  time  at  least  the  virtue  of 
being  enough.  Even  long  afterwards,  so  whole  was 
the  sufficiency  of  this  aspect  of  their  lives  in  spite  of 
the  haunting  misery  of  their  more  far-seeing  mo 
ments,  that  one  of  them  could  write,  with  perhaps 
no  more  enlargement  than  usually  goes  to  the  lauda 
temporis  acti,  truer  to  the  revery  no  doubt  than  to 
the  life  itself,  a  reminiscent  epistle  that  might  have 
been  inspired  by  that  very  ballad  of  Thackeray's 
from  which  they  learned  of  the  Latakia  that  became 
their  favorite  weed  — 

Dear  Marsden:  In  the  days  of  yore 
When  we,  three  lusty  peers  or  four, 
Or  sometimes  five, 


Pseudodoxia  Epidemica  267 

Flourished  on  nought,  and  ate  and  slept 
The  better  for  't,  and  grew  adept 
At  sophomoric  talk  that  kept 
Our  souls  alive, 

We  little  thought  we'd  come  to  praise 
Those  fine  Elizabethan  days 

Of  poverty. 

Now  that  we've  come  to  man's  estate, 
With  widening  parts  and  stiffening  gait, 
Would  we  not  brook  again  that  fate 

With  charity, 

If  we  could  have  those  days  again, — 
The  eager  soul,  the  ready  pen, 

The  easy  jest, 

The  careless  strut,  the  merry  eye, 
A  temper  calm,  a  spirit  high, 
A  ceaseless  curiosity 

And  interest? 

Oh,  once  again  to  enjoy  that  riot, 
That  reckless  Rabelaisian  diet, 

Bismarck  and  salad! 
Those  high  siestas  after  tea, 
With  briar,  cob,  or  Broseley, 
And  dream- compelling  Latakie 

Of  Thackeray's  ballad! 

Once  more  at  Ferris's  to  dine 

Where  spirits  high  compensed  for  wine 

And  luxury! 

Thence  to  the  orchestra  in  time 
To  accomplish  swift  that  torrid  climb, 
And  hear  old  Mozart,  his  sublime 

Sweet  symphony! 


268  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

Do  you  recall  how  by  your  fire 

We  read  —  oh,  land  of  heart's  desire!  — 

Old  Conrad's  "Youth"? 
Rare  Harlow,  Wendhall,  Palinson, 
Shall  we  e'er  meet  in  Muir  again 
To  talk,  to  smoke,  to  dream,  save  when 

We  dream  in  sooth? 

Not  one  of  them  but  was  humbly  grateful  to  the 
college  that  it  had  done  thus  much  for  them,  that 
it  had  made  possible  so  rich  and  intimate  a  friend 
ship.  But  from  the  rest  they  stood  aloof,  and  though 
they  were  personally  happy,  yet  that  constructive 
passion  that  had  thrown  them  together  left  them 
acutely  discontent  with  the  centerlessness  of  their 
collegiate  life.  They  loved  their  college,  its  green 
quads,  its  gray  buildings,  its  dormitories  with  their 
fullness  and  variety  of  the  pageant  of  youth.  If 
their  mutual  relations  were  so  rich,  however,  their 
common  outward  relations  with  the  more  official  as 
pects  of  the  college  were  militant  with  criticism. 
Their  talk  was  fed  by  their  constant  inharmony  with 
the  life  they  were  standing  apart  from.  They  won 
for  themselves  the  current  epithets  for  those  who 
hold  aloof  and  criticise.  They  were,  it  was  said, 
befoulers  of  their  own  nests,  indifferent,  laughing  at 
all  ardor  and  enthusiasm.  They  cried  out  passion 
ately  at  times  that  it  was  those  others  who  were  in 
different  —  those  others  who  took  whatever  came, 
with  uncritical  lightness,  to  whom  one  thing  was  as 
good  as  another.  But  they  were  overwhelmed  with 
the  loud  clamor  of  denial.  Yet  so  far  from  in 
different  were  they  that  it  was  their  very  yearning 
for  something  to  center  their  ardor  upon,  to  be  en- 


Pseudodoxia  Epidemica  269 

thusiastic  about,  that  stirred  their  own  unrest,  their 
own  criticism  of  a  nest  that  had  proved  for  them  so 
inhospitable. 

What  they  were  after  —  and  though  they  did  not 
know  it  in  so  definite  a  formula  it  was  a  no  less 
ardent  search  —  was  wisdom  rather  than  informa 
tion.  "What,"  they  put  it  again  and  again  to  each 
other  in  moments  when  the  life  about  them  seemed 
overwhelming  in  its  diversity  and  cross  purposes  — 
"what  the  deuce  is  it  all  about?"  What  they  felt, 
whenever  they  came  to  choose  anew  from  all  that 
the  college  offered  them  so  lavishly  was  that  just 
the  larger  whole  which  could  stir  the  loyalty  and 
devotion  within  them,  was,  though  the  thing  they 
longed  for,  and  the  thing  for  which  they  had  come, 
just  the  thing  that  escaped  and  was  lost  between 
those  neatly  packed,  self-sufficient  parcels.  To 
others,  perhaps,  those  parcels  were  enough,  but  to 
them  whose  wanderings  took  them  about  the  tu 
multuous  city  that  seemed  so  blind,  so  mad,  in  its 
purposeless  energy;  whose  desultory  reading  in 
spired  them  to  a  speculative  inquiry  fed  by  ideas 
that  transcended  their  immediate  experiences;  and 
whose  talk  bluntly  put  to  all  their  readings  and  ex 
periences  the  most  searching  questions  their  errant 
minds  could  form  —  to  them  those  parcels  of  in 
formation  lacked  the  only  significance  that  could 
have  inhered  in  them  —  relationship  to  some  larger 
vision,  for  a  sense  of  which  they  so  ardently  longed. 

Once,  late  in  their  course,  they  came  upon  a  phrase 
which  fixed  for  them  thenceforth  the  malady  of  their 
college  from  which  they  were  made  to  suffer,  and 
their  triumphant  repetitions  of  it  on  numberless  oc- 


270  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

casions  were  no  doubt  exasperating  to  their  less  dis 
contented  fellows.  Pseudodoxia  Epidemical  Their 
college  was  "not  a  single  discourse  of  one  continuous 
tenor,  of  which  the  latter  part  rose  from  the  former," 
as  Dr.  Johnson7for  whom  they  formed  a  rebellious 
love,  said  of  -that  work  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  "but 
ail  enumeration  of  many  unrelated  particulars." 
Pseudodoxia  Epidemica  indeed!  They  were  not 
prigs.  They  had  a  normal,  healthy  resistance  to 
the  cultural  process,  but  there  came  a  time  when  they 
rose  to  a  sense  of  rebellion  at  the  very  freedom  which 
the  college  gave  them,  andf  which  their  fellows 
gloried  in  —  a  time  when  they  would  have  wel 
comed  a  minute  compulsion  which  would  have  re 
lieved  them  of  the  pain  that  each  new  necessity  of 
choice  forced  them  to  suffer.  Those  others  had, 
perhaps,  aims  which  they  could  conceive  before 
they  were  fitted  to  attain  them;  but  for  them,  their 
purpose  was  one  that  only  discipline  itself  could 
train  them  to  conceive. 

Their  last  days  were  bitter.  How  could  they  have 
been  otherwise?  They  had  their  friendship,  but 
that  was  now  soon  to  be  broken  up,  and  from  their 
college  they  had  got  nothing  permanent.  The  facts, 
the  information  of  their  studies,  had  disappeared, 
and  they  had  never  attained  to  a  point  of  view,  a 
standard  of  judgment.  And  though  they  had  done 
what  the  college  had  required  of  them,  and  done  it  so 
well  that  the  college  had  awarded  them  all  the  honors 
in  its  gift,  their  own  sense  of  its  service  was  that  it 
had  but  enabled  them  to  see  with  disabused  senses 
how  empty,  how  futile  it  had  proved  to  be,  how 
feebly  it  maintained  the  austerities  of  its  great  tra- 


Pseudodoxia  Epidemica  271 

ditions,  and  for  themselves  how  vague  their  sense  of 
a  structure  to  which  the  play  of  their  spirits  might 
contribute,  how  empty  the  future  for  their  spirits 
with  all  hope  of  guidance  gone  from  them. 

What  wonder  that  beneath  the  final  gayeties  with 
which  they  tried  to  celebrate  the  one  thing  which 
the  college  had  given  them  —  friendship  —  there  lay 
a  passionate  bitterness  that  their  college  had  left 
their  spirits  as  uncentered  as  it  had  found  them  at 
the  beginning?  They  were  passionately  bitter,  but 
their  bitterness  was  the  smouldering  of  a  faith  in 
their  spirits  —  a  faith  that  still  burned  in  them  that 
there  was  something  there  to  build  up. 


IV 

IN  QUEST  OF  THE  CENTER 

HIS  later  fortunes  —  our  youth  who  had  passed 
so  rebelliously  through  his  college  years  — 
were  ironic  and  curious.  The  college  had  left  him 
without  a  point  of  view,  without  an  attitude  to  life; 
and  so  strongly  bent  was  his  mind,  wrought  upon 
by  his  family  heritage,  his  early  poverty,  his  years 
of  rebellious  faith  in  the  life  of  the  spirit,  that  a 
point  of  view,  an  attitude  to  life,  was  for  him,  pas 
sionately,  the  one  thing  for  which  he  cared.  His 
college,  however,  which  he  would  have  said  had  done 
nothing  for  him,  had  done  thus  much:  it  had  found 
him  desultorily  reading  Emerson,  Arnold,  Coleridge, 
and  Sir  Thomas  Browne;  and  had  left  him  desul 
torily  reading  Spencer,  Haeckel,  Ibsen,  and  Bernard 
Shaw.  But  even  of  them  he  had  disconcerting  doubts. 
His  uncentered  mind  still  had  before  it  the  search, 
not  for  a  goal  but  for  a  starting  point. 

He  wandered  far,  and  in  his  quest  he  touched 
upon  many  of  the  devotions,  the  theories,  the  phil 
osophies,  by  which  those  of  his  time  were  trying  to 
comport  themselves  as  both  players  and  pawns  in 
the  game.  The  vagaries  of  his  course  were  what 
his  college  had  left  him  subject  to:  he  had  no  bal 
last,  no  compass,  and  no  impulsion  but  a  passionate 
desire  to  arrive.  His  mind,  uninformed,  and  un- 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  273 

formed  by  a  knowledge  of  the  significant  thought  of 
the  past,  did  its  thinking  in  crudely  generic  terms. 
And  in  his  ignorance  and  the  crude  generality  of  his 
thought  he  mounted,  with  a  triumph  that  was  not 
without  its  pathos,  to  the  conception  of  many  a 
world-old  commonplace. 

It  was  one  of  the  ironies  at  which  he  himself  was 
able  to  smile,  that  he  never  in  reality  left  the  college. 
He  could  smile,  though  bitterly,  at  the  sudden  light 
that  his  appointment  threw  on  the  emptiness  of  his 
own  college  years.  He  was  a  part  of  the  fountain 
now,  he  himself,  for  all  his  ignorance.  The  mirthless 
humor  of  the  situation  increased  in  him  the  impatient 
recklessness  that  had  roughened  his  manners  and 
made  his  speech  harsh. 

His  acceptance  made  him  aware  that  even  his 
own  failure  in  the  college  had  not  wholly  daunted 
his  faith  that  what  he  had  not  got  was  none  the  less 
there.  As  he  looked  out  at  the  world  it  was  still 
the  college  that  contained  the  mystery,  though  he 
had  failed  to  come  upon  it.  And  no  doubt  it  was 
the  sense  that  there  he  might  still  wander  in  his 
search  that  had  given  him  the  thrill  with  which  he 
had  welcomed  the  chance  to  stay  within  its  walls. 
He  did  not  at  the  first  moment  realize  how  soon  the 
irony  of  his  own  position  would  envelop  him.  It 
was  but  the  greater  when  it  came  upon  him,  that  he 
was  to  profess  the  very  literature  from  which  the 
college  itself  had  in  a  measure  weaned  him. 

Were  those  others,  he  presently  came  to  ask,  as 
vague  as  he  as  to  what  ultimate  thing  he  was  driving 
at?  Were  they  perhaps  unaware,  those  grey-beards, 


274  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

that  there  was  a  structure  toward  which  they  should 
be  building?  Were  they  unaware  of  their  own 
vagueness?  It  came  home  to  him  doggedly,  how 
ever,  in  spite  of  the  rebellion  which  made  him  so 
arrogantly  impatient  with  the  blindness  of  those  who 
could  not  penetrate  his  own  shallows,  that  he  was  as 
yet  a  mere  novice  elevated  no  doubt  more  for  his 
promise  than  for  his  attainment.  He  spent  his  first 
year,  therefore,  in  search  and  inquiry,  with  more  pet 
ulance  than  he  could  justify  in  his  more  urbane  mo 
ments,  but  without  rancor  and  with  an  open  mind. 
Did  those  others  know,  those  others  who  —  so 
specifically  did  he  probe  —  were  beside  him  and 
above  him  in  his  own  work,  what  the  deuce  it  was 
all  about?  From  his  own  older  observations  he 
knew  that  they  were  divided  into  factions  with 
curious  mutual  contempt.  One  of  these  factions  was 
concerned  with  the  emotional  values  of  language  and 
literature,  and  the  other  with  their  historical  origins. 
For  his  own  part,  by  virtue  of  the  impulse  that  had 
first  brought  him  to  the  college,  he  would  instinc 
tively  have  fallen  among  the  emotional  interpreters, 
had  it  not  been  for  a  circumstance  that  had  arisen 
from  the  vagrancies  of  his  early  experience.  As  it 
was,  however,  this  circumstance  held  him  aloof  from 
both.  The  prompt  result  was  that  he  came  to  be 
lieve  that  the  thing  he  had  so  long  hunted  for  with 
out  success  he  must  find  elsewhere  than  in  the  pur 
suit  of  his  own  business  —  perhaps  even  elsewhere 
than  in  the  college.  The  effect  on  his  own  work 
was  that  it  became  a  curious  hybrid  intrinsically  no 
nearer  his  sense  of  right  than  either  of  the  factions 
he  was  holding  aloof  from.  But  for  him  it  had  the 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  275 

virtue  of  not  having  crystallized  into  what  he  felt 
to  be  definitely  wrong.  He  suffered,  however,  a 
renewal  of  the  misery  that  had  so  long  dogged  his 
thinking  moments.  He  had  attained  to  no  sense  of 
life;  he  was  still  adrift. 

The  circumstance  that  held  him  so  aloof  from  the 
tendency  of  the  factions  was  the  remembrance  of 
his  own  early  poverty,  and  his  quickened  sympathy 
for  the  sordid  chaos  of  the  city  in  which  his  days 
were  fallen  —  remote  considerations  enough  in 
their  apparent  detachment  from  his  problem,  but 
for  him  marking  inevitably  the  way  of  his  approach. 
As  the  year  crept  by  that  followed  the  beginning 
of  his  duties  his  reflection  threw  him  more  and  more 
into  doubt,  and  at  last  into  utter  negation  of  the 
value  of  the  routine  of  his  teaching.  What  was  its 
point  in  its  isolation  from  the  general  life?  Echoes 
of  such  a  cry  came  to  him  in  his  reveries,  in  his 
wanderings  about  the  city,  in  the  reading  he  had 
fallen  into.  He  understood  the  general  life  with  all 
the  vividness  born  of  harsh  experience,  and  slowly 
but  without  bitterness  he  generalized  it  into  an  in 
justice  that  constituted  the  great  human  problem. 
What  indeed  was  life  for  if  not  for  those  who  lived 
it?  And  what  were  its  institutions  for  if  not  to 
make  it  more  perfect  for  them?  But  the  college  —  ! 
His  impatience  grew. 

In  retrospect  the  tenuous  thread  of  accidents  that 
had  rescued  him  from  a  lifetime  of  sordid  struggle 
for  bread  seemed  to  have  been  saved  from  breaking 
so  fortuitously  that  he  could  not  think  of  it  without 
a  shudder.  It  had  miraculously  not  broken;  and  he 
had  gone  to  college.  Was  he  now,  however,  he  who 


276  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

knew  so  keenly  what  poverty  meant,  to  isolate  him 
self  from  all  connection  with  the  common  lot?  Was 
the  college  after  all  merely  an  escape?  Did  it  not 
gain  its  significance  from  its  service  to  humanity? 
It  was  just  that  significance  that  he  was  unable  to 
see  in  the  reality  before  him.  He  knew  that  poverty 
was  too  common  an  accident  to  be  ignored,  yet  here 
was  he,  luckily  rescued  from  it,  in  the  attitude  of 
indifference.  The  snug  remoteness  of  his  daily  rou 
tine  revolted  him.  He  cast  himself  passionately 
among  the  humanitarians. 

So  unused  was  he  to  the  drive  of  a  positive  en 
thusiasm  that  in  its  first  moments  he  gave  an  un 
checked  rein  to  his  humanitarian  impulse.  He  saw 
with  new  eyes  the  chaotic  city  about  him,  its  squalor, 
its  depravity,  its  waste  of  humanity.  He  saw,  more 
bitterly  than  all,  young  children  growing  up  in  sur 
roundings  such  as  to  condemn  them,  before  they 
could  raise  a  voice  in  protest,  to  a  lifetime  no  better 
than  the  life  they  were  born  to.  In  the  intensity  of 
his  feelings  he  saw  the  subjective  equality  of  men 
in  the  right  to  happiness.  And  the  spectacle  he 
saw  before  him  was  one  of  appalling  inequality.  The 
eternal  mystery  of  consciousness,  the  haphazard  dis 
tribution  of  identity,  the  inequality  of  natural  gifts, 
he  could  muse  upon  without  destroying  his  sense 
that  for  much  of  the  variety  of  fortune  to  which  con 
scious  identities  were  born  humanity  itself  was  re 
sponsible. 

With  that  acceptance  of  responsibility,  aptly 
enough,  there  had  come  to  him,  as  to  many,  the 
sense  of  power  to  meet  it.  At  a  critical  moment  his 
mind  had  been  seized  and  formed  by  the  evolution- 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  277 

ary  conception.  It  would  not  have  been  possible 
now,  if  it  had  been  desirable,  to  cast  his  thoughts  in 
any  other  mould.  Perhaps  because,  with  the  scien 
tific  movement,  the  humanities  had  dropped  into 
a  minor  place,  it  was  easier  for  the  people  of  his  time 
to  think  of  human  life  in  terms  of  biology  than  it 
would  have  been  for  an  earlier  generation.  The 
scientific  world  had  gone  with  Darwin  and  Huxley 
and  Spencer.  With  it  as  with  them  the  biological 
analogy  had  become  the  biological  identity.  And  in 
biology  the  whole  of  the  past  had  come  to  be  summed 
up  in  a  word:  Evolution.  The  conception  was  in 
toxicating.  At  last  men  seemed  to  have  grasped 
life  as  a  whole.  The  sense  of  its  slow  and  painful 
duration  and  development,  slowly  and  painfully  ac 
quired  by  the  old  humanists  from  the  records  of 
human  thought  and  experience,  was  here  foreshort 
ened  by  the  flash  of  a  definition  that  revealed  the 
process  of  life  from  its  beginning,  and  cast  light 
ahead  into  the  future.  Boxed  into  the  brief  compass 
of  a  word  life  seemed  somehow  easily  dirigible. 

Round  about  lay  the  whole  body  of  scientific 
knowledge  to  be  mastered  and  enlarged  and  applied 
to  human  life;  and  before  stretched  the  new  route 
of  humanity  whose  destiny  now  lay  in  its  own  self- 
conscious  power.  Life  could  be  rationalized.  In 
stead  of  the  haphazardry  of  chance  which  had  made 
such  fearful  waste  and  suffering  as  he  saw  about 
him,  there  could  be  ordered  a  social  process  in  which 
every  individual  should  be  brought  to  the  highest 
possible  development.  Here  was  a  service,  it  seemed 
to  him  in  the  sweep  of  his  new  outlook,  to  which  he 
might  devote  himself  without  the  hesitations  that 


278  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

had  dogged  his  professional  life.  He  spent  a  period 
bitterly  regretting  that  in  his  first  vision  of  science 
there  had  not  been  revealed  to  him  the  connection 
between  science  and  the  human  problems  with  which 
he  was  so  persistently  concerned.  The  emptiness  of 
his  college  years  might  then  have  been  filled  with 
just  that  significance  for  which  he  had  so  passion 
ately  longed. 

In  the  midst  of  such  musings  he  stood,  one  dusk, 
at  a  down-town  street  corner  half  filled  with  shame 
that  he  still  held  aloof  from  the  real  work  of  life. 
Stores  and  counting  houses  and  factories  were  clos 
ing,  and  clerks  and  operatives  tired  from  the  routine 
of  the  day  thronged  the  streets.  Wistful  girls'  faces, 
still  young,  still  pretty,  but  with  the  mark  of  the 
curse  already  upon  them,  peered  at  him  as  he  stood, 
himself  wistful  and  sympathetic,  at  the  side  of  the 
human  stream.  Once  or  twice  he  caught  in  an  un 
derstanding  face  an  answering  sympathy,  and  he 
glowed  with  a  rush  of  feeling  that  confirmed  mys 
teriously  his  sense  that  his  academic  aloofness  was 
essentially  wrong.  The  warm  pulse  of  humanity 
throbbed  at  his  heart.  Once  there  passed  him  an 
evil  fellow  cursing  his  drunken  wife.  There  was 
no  redeeming  virtue  in  the  man's  own  face;  he  too 
was  sodden  with  drink.  But  our  youth  was  more 
touched  with  the  incident  as  it  was  than  if  the  man 
had  been  better  himself.  Here  was  no  mere  per 
sonal  tragedy  of  virtue  victimized  by  vice.  That 
would  have  been  of  the  native  warp  of  life.  Here 
was  something  larger  in  which  responsible  society 
itself  was  the  oppressor,  crushing  out  the  possibility 
of  virtue  from  both  victims.  He  shuddered  at  the 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  2  79 

picture.  And  back  in  his  mind  there  came  a  mock 
ing  voice  repeating  what  he  had  said  that  morning 
to  the  generous  youths  whose  minds  he  was  helping 
to  train:  "The  beauties  of  the  Faerie  Queene  lie  in 
that  very  detachment  from  reality  that  has  freed  the 
poet's  fancy  from  all  sordid  restraints."  How  paltry 
it  sounded,  cold,  aloof,  remote  from  the  actual  life  of 
suffering  man,  and  to  be  indulged  only  by  ignor 
ing  the  substratum  of  human  misery!  Was  the  col 
lege,  after  all,  only  a  private  device  of  the  elect  to 
enable  them  to  escape  from  the  intrusive  responsi 
bility  of  life?  And  was  he,  having  escaped,  to  devote 
himself  to  freeing  others  from  this  responsibility? 

He  returned  at  night  within  the  college  walls  with 
a  sense  of  emptiness  and  discontent  more  poignant 
than  he  had  ever  known.  The  expensive  elegance  of 
the  college  architecture,  far  removed  from  the  sor 
did  squalor  he  had  but  now 'caught  a  glimpse  of,  re 
volted  him.  His  comfortable  supper  revolted  him. 
The  Faerie  Queene  on  his  study  table  revolted  him. 
And  the  thought  that  he  would  in  another  day  be 
back  at  the  task  of  leading  youths  out  of  a  vital 
concern  for  life  —  he  who  knew  so  well  the  colossal 
injustice  of  civilization — taunted  him  insupportably. 
He  had  lost  his  humor,  but  he  laughed  outright, 
mockingly,  at  the  spectacle  he  made  for  himself.  In 
the  madness  of  the  moment  he  dramatized  for  the 
morrow  an  impassioned  revolt  before  his  startled 
class,  a  wild  fling  at  the  smug  process  he  was  assist 
ing  at  and  they  were  submitting  to.  He  felt  fiercely 
that  he  could  endure  it  no  longer. 

And  in  the  white  glow  of  his  passion  there  came 
to  him  a  revelation.  Never  before  had  he  been  so 


280  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

intimately,  so  wholly  himself,  so  free  from  the  ob 
structive  trammels  of  criticism  and  doubt.  Never 
had  he  felt  so  at  one  with  himself,  internal  assent 
going  out  to  meet  impulse.  Criticism  and  doubt! 
He  saw  that  what  he  had  been  wasting  his  years 
looking  for  in  the  college  was  an  intellectual  unity 
in  his  conception  of  life.  What  wonder  he  had  found 
nothing!  It  was  suddenly  borne  in  on  him  that  life 
was  a  matter  of  living,  and  that  its  unity  lay  not  in 
an  intellectual  grasp  but  in  an  impulse  vitalized  by 
emotion.  He  attained  in  a  moment  to  a  sense  of  how 
essentially  and  obtrusively  an  outsider  was  that  in 
tellect  that  had  taken  its  seat  in  men's  minds  to  the 
disturbance  of  their  internal  unity.  He  had  found 
himself  at  last! 

His  next  step,  as  he  came  to  realize,  was  but  a 
confirmation  of  one  of  the  findings  of  his  passion: 
the  reason  was  an  intruder.  But  the  confirmation 
came  from  so  different  a  source  and  with  so  differ 
ent  a  coloring  that  he  had  shifted  his  loyalty  to  his 
intelligence  before  he  recognized  the  path  he  was 
following. 

In  his  present  loyalty  to  his  passions,  however,  the 
immediate  restlessness  of  inaction  was  intolerable, 
and  he  left  his  room  in  search  of  quiet  for  his  spirit. 
It  was  perhaps  an  echo  of  that  rationalism  that  was 
inherent  in  him  that  sent  him  now  to  an  advocatus 
diaboli  in  the  form  of  an  obscure  Grecian  whose 
aloofness  was  complete,  yet  whose  very  aloofness 
had  a  quiet  authority  that  appealed  to  him.  Tonight, 
however,  when  weary  of  mind  and  body  he  had 
sunk  into  the  great  chair  hospitably  drawn  up  before 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  281 

the  fireplace,  and  had  taken  a  mellow  cigar  from 
his  host's  inlaid  humidor,  the  very  seductiveness 
of  the  moment  in  those  pleasant  surroundings  cried 
out  to  his  conscience.  The  Persian  rugs  under  his 
feet,  the  great  racks  of  books  against  the  walls,  the 
few  rare  pictures,  the  rich  curtains,  even  now  seemed 
to  dull  the  vividness  of  that  other  spectacle  that 
had  so  crystallized  the  impulses  of  his  generous 
sympathy. 

He  could,  he  knew,  have  broached  the  burning 
question  within  him,  and  won  a  sympathetic  analy 
sis  of  his  case  from  his  quiet  friend;  but  he  had  no 
need:  the  rich  seclusion  of  this  burial  among  the 
records  of  the  past,  of  this  content  with  life  at  second 
hand,  was  eloquent  of  the  findings  that  would  come 
of  such  an  analysis.  His  host  had  confronted  too, 
no  doubt,  the  problem  of  life;  and  the  shelter  of  the 
cloister  was  his  solution. 

The  evening  was  not,  however,  without  its  im 
plicit  broaching  of  the  issue.  They  looked  together 
at  curious  old  books  with  quaint  pictures,  at  rare 
first  editions,  and  talked  lightly  of  the  strange,  fitful 
aberrations  of  the  human  spirit  —  of  the  sophists, 
of  the  schoolmen  mediaeval  and  modern,  of  the 
Blakes,  the  Newmans,  the  Tolstoys  in  their  vain 
eternal  quest  for  the  quiet  of  the  soul.  But  the 
older  man,  with  delicacy,  had  no  unasked  dogmatism 
for  his  guest;  and  the  younger  man  was  too  uncer 
tain  of  his  own  purposes  to  risk  subsequent  affront 
to  advice  which  he  knew  he  might  evoke.  They 
spoke  of  Plato.  His  host,  with  a  smile,  drew  from 
beneath  the  light  on  his  table  the  blotted  draft  of 
matter  yet  fresh  from  his  pen  and  incomplete. 


282  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

"A  moment's  mood,"  he  said,  smiling  gravely,  "but 
here  in  the  midst  of  the  turmoil  of  a  life  that  has  got 
beyond  our  control  by  its  very  numbers,  and  by 
giving  over  the  reins  to  numbers,  I  sometimes  re 
volt.  I  am  no  poet,  alas!  but  the  spectacle  of  life 
is  sometimes  too  poignant  for  utter  silence.  These 
lines  are  serious,  but  only  half  serious." 

The  younger  man  read  the  passage  without 
comment. 

Colors  flashing  upon  the  retina;  motion,  change,  va 
riety  stimulating  the  eager  vision;  sounds  jailing  grate 
fully  upon  the  ear,  of  poplar  leaves  on  still  midnights, 
of  flames  upon  the  burning  hearth,  of  winter  winds  in 
the  chimney,  of  low  unhurried  voices;  love,  or  hate,  or 
ambition,  or  anger,  or  sympathy  —  above  all,  sym 
pathy —  concentrating  the  soul  upon  outward  things; 
fair  faces,  fair  forms,  stately  music,  humane  justice, 
bringing  the  hush  of  wonder  upon  the  spirit;  the  rush 
of  life,  its  traffickings,  its  moth-like  beating  about  the 
marsh-lights  of  pleasure,  the  heaps  of  broken  wings  and 
bodies  seen  at  dawn  the  sport  of  the  forgetful  winds; 
the  ardent  sense  that  deep-seated  in  th.e  soul  is  a  vision 
of  simple  order  which,  could  it  but  find  a  voice,  might 
breathe  a  meaning  into  the  chaotic  elements  —  such 
are  the  moments  when  reality  impinges  with  intensity. 

Then,  sudden,  a  veil  falls  upon  the  spirit,  and  reality, 
the  vision  of  life,  becomes  but  a  vision  indeed,  becomes 
but  the  shadow  of  a  dream,  so  unmotived  the  exits  and 
the  entrances,  so  purposeless  the  sufferings,  so  empty  the 
foolishness  and  the  wisdom,  so  meaningless  even  the 
happiness  that  alone  could  make  the  evanescent  con 
sciousness  of  being  worth  the  insistent  pain  of  life.  If 
then  life  be  but  a  dream  —  for  that  dreams  come  and 
go  and  bring  strange  recombinations  in  kaleidoscopic 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  283 

succession,  the  impatient  soul  might,  not  unworthily, 
wish  to  choose  for  its  own  phantom  passage  its  own 
phantom  moment,  Then  — 

0  Chronos,  dream  again,  if  it  be  sooth 

That  life  be  but  the  shadow  of  your  dream, 

And  we  its  shadow  puppets.    Dream  again. 

Dream  me  a  Greek  upon  the  agora, 

There  to  hold  converse  with  wise  Socrates, 

When  life  was  young,  and  wisdom  in  its  youth 

Unfettered  by  the  phantom  facts  of  time, 

Held  to  the  heart  and  soul  of  living  men. 

Then  might  I  walk  with  Plato  —  still  unguessed 

The  anguish  of  all  time  once  he  was  gone. 

And  it  were  well  to  feel  the  human  warmth 

Of  austere  virtue  bodied  in  a  god  — 

A  thing  of  beauty  and  a  presence  near  — 

It  was  a  fantastic,  futile,  whimsical  conception, 
but  the  young  man  read  it  in  his  present  state  of 
mind  with  an  intensity  that  he  tried  to  conceal  even 
from  the  author  himself.  Out  of  all  proportion  to 
what  it  said  it  awoke  echoes  of  old,  long-silent  voices 
within  him.  And  when  he  rose  to  go  it  was  with  a 
strange  complex  of  emotions  that  kept  him  from  a 
word  of  comment  or  applause. 

He  said  good-night,  and  launched  himself  into  the 
empty  streets  to  walk  until  he  should  again  have 
composed  his  newly  aroused  spirit. 

Most  curiously  his  passion  of  the  afternoon  had 
died.  The  passion  of  the  growth  of  months  had 
quietly  ebbed  —  it  smote  him  in  his  shame  —  under 
the  soft  influence  of  an  hour  in  the  midst  of  luxury, 
and  talk  of  the  enhaloed  past.  That  his  passion 
should  have  died  so  easily,  however,  was  but  an 


284  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

additional  impulse  to  his  conscience.  He  would 
follow  the  day's  impulse  though  the  passion  had  gone 
out  of  it.  His  conscience  dominated  him. 

Under  the  cool  stars  he  looked  curiously  upon 
this  sharp  duality  that  had  suddenly  disintegrated 
itself  inside  him  —  no  less  that  they  both  for  the 
moment  pointed  in  the  same  direction.  They  were 
of  different  orders,  deriving  from  different  seats  of 
authority.  Their  commands  echoed  from  different 
quarters.  He  questioned  searchingly  the  paradox 
that,  between  the  two,  his  allegiance  went  with  the 
one  that  seemed  the  less  native,  the  one  that  he 
seemed  even  to  love  the  less  and  whose  right  he  could 
not  explain  —  his  conscience. 

Seeing  his  allegiance  secure  but  without  the  en 
dearing  impulse  of  feeling,  he  tried  to  rally  his  emo 
tions  to  his  support  to  make  his  final  obedience  less 
perfunctory.  He  recalled  tauntingly  his  host's 
phrase,  "here  in  the  midst  of  the  turmoil  of  life,"  to 
describe  the  seclusion  of  that  aloof  library  where  it 
was  known  that  he  spent  all  his  leisure  hours,  and 
of  which  a  single  hour  had  sufficed  to  thrust  off  into 
unmeasured  distance  that  turmoil  of  life  and  its 
poignant  injustices  against  which  but  a  moment  be 
fore  our  youth  had  risen  in  passionate  rebellion.  He 
recalled  his  host's  slighting  reference  to  numbers. 
He  recalled  the  dream  fantasy  with  its  nostalgic 
straining  toward  the  past.  But  his  passion  still  lay 
dormant,  if  not  dead. 

He  knew,  however,  that  on  the  morrow  he  would 
take  some  step  in  that  service  to  humanity  which  he 
had  deferred  so  long.  He  pictured  to  himself  the 
humble  tasks  of  relieving  poverty,  comforting 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  285 

despair,  instructing  elementary  ignorance.  There 
at  least,  however  vague  his  present  sense  of  practical 
means,  he  should  know  what  he  was  driving  at.  And 
though  it  would  be  work  done  in  obscurity,  and  go 
perceptibly  no  farther  than  the  few  wretches  whom 
he  could  reach,  it  would  at  least  for  his  own  peace  of 
mind  be  something  that  he  could  see  the  significance 
of.  If  he  should  go  to  it  without  passionate  enthu 
siasm  it  would  at  least  satisfy  his  reason  and  his 
conscience.  In  the  freedom  of  his  mood  he  followed 
an  impulse  and  went  again,  alone  now,  on  one  of 
those  midnight  rambles  that  had  added  their  touch 
of  endearing  lawlessness  to  his  undergraduate  friend 
ship.  And  when  he  came,  by  way  of  the  old  route, 
to  the  lake  he  sat  down  on  a  deserted  bench  and  let 
his  mind  take  its  undirected  flight.  That  it  went  off 
into  corollaries  of  his  day's  experience  was  in  keep 
ing  with  his  natural  bent.  He  had  an  instinctive  ab 
horrence  of  isolated  data;  he  was  more  concerned  for 
the  relations  of  the  fact  than  for  the  fact  itself.  The 
particular  facet  of  his  day's  experience  that  his  pres 
ent  corollaries  sprang  from  was  his  discovery  of  the 
duality  of  his  internal  government.  It  intrigued 
him;  and  it  intrigued  him  the  more  because  though 
he  had  known  of  it  and  could  have  phrased  it  any 
time  these  many  years,  yet  only  now  had  it  become 
a  practical  reality  for  him.  He  had  found  it,  so  to 
speak,  in  its  own  natural  lair,  working  in  its  work 
ing  garb  in  its  own  workshop.  The  cold  psychology 
of  it  phrased  in  analytical  terms  had  never  come 
home  to  him. 

It  was  incidentally  to  this  last  perception  that  his 
eyes  were  suddenly  open  to  the  significance  of  the 


286  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

scholastic  work  he  had  taken  up.  For  he  caught  a 
fleeting  glimpse  of  the  peculiar  fact  of  literature  — 
that  unlike  the  sciences  that  dealt  analytically  and 
mechanically  with  the  human  aspects  of  life,  litera 
ture  dealt  with  them  where  they  were  to  be  found, 
and  with  all  their  clothing  of  emotional  force.  What 
for  him  had  always  been  so  merely  pleasurable  came 
upon  him  keenly  as  something  else,  something  very 
close  to  a  revelation  of  truth  as  it  existed  for  human 
use. 

The  perception  was  as  yet  general,  but  he  saw  in 
it  a  field  for  a  wide  and  revealing  development.  And 
it  struck  him  as  a  touch  of  irony  that  the  significance 
he  had  struggled  so  long  and  so  blindly  for  he  should 
see  for  the  first  time  just  now  when  he  was  on  the 
point  of  abandoning  it  for  something  else.  But  he 
wrenched  himself  from  these  regrets  and  went  on 
arily  into  the  pleasant  speculations  that  he  had 
caught  a  glimpse  of. 

A  pair  of  verses  from  his  host's  fantastic  poem 
repeated  themselves  in  his  mind,  and  associated 
themselves  significantly  with  the  dual  government  he 
had  but  now  been  so  keen  about. 

And  it  were  well  to  feel  the  human  warmth 
Of  austere  virtue  bodied  in  a  god. 

His  thoughts  took  easy  wing;  matters  that  before 
had  lain  isolated  and  inert  fell  into  clarifying  rela 
tions.  He  realized  now  that  the  sense  of  external 
authority,  as  distinguished  from  the  internal  pas 
sions,  was,  for  all  the  anthropologists,  the  real  basis 
of  religion ;  and  he  felt  for  the  first  time  —  he  who 
at  one  time  had  expected  to  enter  the  church  —  a 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  287 

spontaneous  religious  impulse.  The  inspiration  of 
the  Hebrew  prophets,  always  before  to  him  a  curious 
phenomenon  of  a  strange,  isolated  people,  became 
one  with  the  inspiration  of  all  those  who  had  at 
tained  in  spirit  to  the  seat  of  that  external  authority 
that  looked  down  serenely  but  inexorably  upon  hu 
man  affairs.  The  familiar  demon  of  Socrates,  at 
which  he  had  smiled  indulgently,  became  a  reality 
—  the  externalization  by  a  poetic  nature  of  that 
same  authority.  Confirmations  fell  in  from  odd 
nooks  of  his  memory.  A  passage  that  long  ago  had 
impressed  him  from  a  translation  of  the  Antigone 
sprang  into  new  vitality  —  the  maiden's  tragic 
obedience  to 

The  unchangeable,  the  unwritten  code  of  Heaven, 
Which  is  not  of  to-day  and  yesterday, 
But  lives  forever,  having  origin 
Whence  no  man  knows.  .   .    . 

The  long  back-swell  from  an  offshore  breeze 
heaved  and  broke  endlessly  at  his  feet,  and  in  the 
darkness  under  the  vast  skies,  against  the  great 
background  of  silence  there  seemed  something  in 
exorable  in  the  somber  rush  and  recession  of  the 
waters.  There,  indeed,  was  a  part  of  nature,  of 
which  he  too  was  a  part,  and  from  which  he  had 
what  he  had  of  life.  But  he  saw  something  dimly 
that  was  not  working  in  the  heave  and  flow  of  the 
swells,  something  that  arrayed  itself,  in  a  measure, 
against  the  mechanic  fatal  forces  that  he  shared 
with  the  winds  and  the  waves.  Whether  it  too  might 
be  a  part  of  that  nature  he  did  not  then  stop  to  in 
quire,  but  he  saw  that  it  was  a  thing  distinctively 


288  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

human,  and  that  it  intruded  upon  the  situation  with 
a  scheme  of  its  own. 

Rapidly  as  he  sat  there  in  the  darkness,  and  with 
perhaps  a  too  facile  generalization,  he  cast  his  senses 
and  his  passions  on  the  side  of  nature;  they  were 
things  that  came  with  the  coming  of  life  and 
flourished  without  cultivation  in  the  na'ive  freedom 
of  neglect.  And  the  intruder  was  the  intelligence, 
with  its  own  conception  of  a  way  of  life  that  was 
good,  which  came  with  its  schemes  for  directing  the 
senses  and  the  passions,  guiding  the  one  to  special 
aptitudes,  and  the  other  to  special  restraints  and  di 
rections. 

He  had  his  love  for  the  senses.  He  had  his  love 
for  the  starry  night  about  him,  and  for  the  remem 
brance  of  sights  and  odors  and  sounds  that  bound 
him  in  affection  to  certain  places  —  the  odors  of 
certain  lanes,  the  noises  of  the  house  heard  through 
closed  doors  in  obbligato  to  the  gliding  pictures  of 
well  loved  tales,  the  checkered  countrysides  of  his 
boyhood  home.  And  in  his  friends  he  loved  the 
fresh  spontaneities  of  smile  and  gesture,  the  play 
of  spirit,  the  touches  of  life.  Indeed  those  were  the 
very  things  he  loved.  But  he  loved  them  when  they 
were  directed  and  proportioned  to  the  intruder's 
scheme.  For  he  had  seen  sensuality  and  gluttony 
and  malice  and  envy  and  anger  and  cowardice  — 
spontaneities  as  natural  and  lively  as  the  beat  of 
the  waves  at  his  feet  —  and  he  had  hated  them.  He 
knew  that  though  it  was  life  he  valued,  it  was  life 
tempered  and  proportioned. 

In  the  rapid  outline  of  his  case  he  paused  for  a 
moment  over  the  conscience.  It  was  not  intelli- 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  289 

gence,  he  saw  at  once.  It  belonged  to  the  affections. 
Reluctantly  he  conceded  it  to  the  side  of  nature. 
But  he  saw,  too,  that  if  it  belonged  there  it  was, 
none  the  less,  the  tie  between  nature  and  the  in 
truder  —  the  sanction  for  the  intruder's  authority. 
It  was  a  spontaneous  loyalty  to  the  intrusive  schemes 
for  the  good. 

He  rose  slowly  and  began  his  slow  march  home 
ward.  There  was  a  peace  in  his  mind  that  he  had 
not  known  since  the  first  innocent  year  of  his  col 
lege  life.  He  was  still,  indeed,  far  from  out  of  the 
bog  he  had  been  struggling  to  get  free  from.  But  he 
had  at  last  a  sense  of  the  direction  to  follow. 

Characteristically  he  saw  the  danger  that  in  his 
intellectual  excitement  he  might  dull  his  own  sense 
of  responsibility  to  the  external  authority  that  had 
taken  residence  in  his  conscience;  and  when  the 
afternoon  of  the  following  day  found  him  free  he 
betook  himself  resolutely  to  one  of  those  modern 
"settlements"  where  so  nobly  men  and  women  of 
refinement  and  intelligence  had  thrown  themselves 
on  the  general  stream  of  humanity  with  the  hope 
of  rendering  a  service  perceptible  and  direct  to 
those  who  were  most  deeply  submerged.  He  went 
with  a  head  cooler  and  a  heart  lighter  than  he  had 
had  for  many  a  day.  He  had,  it  was  true,  a  sense 
of  loss  —  loss  of  the  enthusiasm  which  yesterday 
had  promised  to  make  him  a  passionate  devotee, 
and  for  which  his  gain  of  a  rational  self-direction 
was  not  a  direct  substitute.  He  had  not  lost,  how 
ever,  what  had  lain  at  the  bottom  of  his  original 
impulse  —  the  sense  that  life  was  plastic  in  the  in- 


2  go  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

creasingly  self-conscious  hands  of  humanity  itself; 
that  devoted  service  in  the  moulding  of  the  future 
might  be  directly  related  to  that  end  he  had  so 
futilely  groped  for  in  the  long  blind  wanderings 
through  his  college  years. 

It  was  a  shock  to  him,  when  he  came  to  it,  to  find 
that  he  had  overlooked  the  matter  of  his  own  de 
pendence  —  that  he  had  nothing  to  offer  but  his  un 
trained  services,  and  that  he  must  live  by  his  own 
work  elsewhere.  He  clung  therefore  to  his  college, 
and  offered  to  the  settlement  his  leisure  hours.  He 
plunged  with  devotion  into  simple  duties  among  the 
ignorant  and  oppressed,  and  with  them  at  times  his 
sympathies  brought  him  almost  to  the  height  of  his 
early  passion.  The  great  injustices  of  life  came 
home  to  him  in  the  concrete.  Victims  of  greed,  of 
bad  laws,  of  good  laws  unenforced;  children  broken 
body  and  soul  by  work,  by  evil  environment;  girls 
dragged  in  the  mire  by  men's  evil  passions;  old  age 
crushed  by  relentless  want,  outcast  and  neglected, 
dying  in  corners;  worse  than  all,  depravity  that  had 
been  born  and  bred  to  depravity;  and  more  touching 
than  all,  the  silent  heroism  of  the  poor. 

If  in  his  present  state  he  had  been  less  rational 
the  force  of  his  feelings  might  have  carried  him 
wholly  into  the  work  of  the  settlement,  for  oppor 
tunity  soon  came  by  which  he  might  have  dropped 
his  connection  with  the  college  and  earned  his  living 
in  the  very  service  itself.  He  could  smile,  a  little 
ruefully  perhaps  but  still  smile,  to  see  that  his  hang 
ing  back  helped  to  confirm  the  ill  repute  that  the 
reason  acquires  in  some  very  worthy  minds.  But 
in  his  old  college  days  he  had  grown  inured  to  the 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  291 

easy  blame  of  those  who  had  little  experience  of 
the  inner  drive  of  an  idea.  And  now  there  had  re 
vived  in  him  in  the  midst  of  his  labors,  in  spite  of 
his  own  uneasy  sense  of  disloyalty,  in  spite  of  his 
knowledge  that  reason  often  became  the  tool  of  sloth 
and  desire,  the  sharp  restraint  of  a  rational  doubt. 
And  he  hesitated.  He  had  viewed  humanity  from 
below,  stirred  by  a  sense  of  mastery  in  the  vast 
sweep  of  the  term  evolution,  by  the  sense  of  life's 
plasticity,  and  by  the  sense  of  human  responsibility 
and  power;  and  he  had  tried  to  enrich  the  lives  of 
some  of  those  who  had  been  trampled  to  the  bottom. 
No  doubt  here  and  there  he  had  helped.  But  he  saw 
with  discouragement  how  feeble  was  the  remedy  at 
best,  and  how  wild  the  trampling.  He  had  no 
criticism  for  those  who  so  nobly  did  the  work  of 
relief;  but  he  saw  clearly  that  they  were  not  fight 
ing  the  battle  —  that  they  were  but  caring  for  the 
wounded.  For  him,  he  wanted  to  enter  the  fight 
itself. 

His  old  constructive  passion  was  again  clamorous, 
and  though  he  knew  how  empty  his  own  college 
years  had  been,  and  though  he  saw  in  neither  his 
own  teaching  nor  that  of  his  colleagues  about  him 
anything  that  should  make  the  college  better  for 
those  that  followed  him,  there  came  to  him  a  per 
ception  that  made  him  cling  to  the  college  in  spite 
of  his  doubts.  In  his  harsh  contact  with  the  con 
crete  injustices  of  life,  there  came  the  sharp  rein 
forcement  of  the  distinction  he  had  attained  to  in 
his  own  mind.  As  he  looked  about  him  he  saw,  in 
print  of  life,  wisdom  giving  to  humanity  the  clue  to 
all  it  had  of  the  good,  and  the  unrestrained  passions 


2 92  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

all  it  had  that  horrified  him.  He  could  only  con 
clude  that  the  task  of  construction  lay  in  the  de 
velopment  of  that  wisdom,  and  in  the  restraint  and 
guidance  of  those  passions. 

In  the  meantime  he  had  passed  through  a  period 
when  he  had  gone  heart  and  soul  with  the  socialists. 
They  at  least  were  fighting  the  battle  itself.  They 
recognized  the  human  responsibility  for  human  evo 
lution,  and  seemed  to  promise  in  their  seizing  and 
molding  of  the  social  process  the  rationalization  of 
what  until  now  had  been  so  cruel  in  its  anarchy. 
He  studied  anew  his  Marx,  his  Wells,  the  latter  with 
its  stirrings  of  a  kindly  sympathy  so  like  his  own 
that  his  criticism  was  lulled  to  slumber.  But  in 
time  it  awoke,  and  he  saw  in  the  schemes  of  so 
cialism  obstacles  that  checked  him  sharply  in  his 
conversion.  In  the  harsh  questions  that  he  put  to 
himself  over  the  miseries  that  fell  now  so  un 
ceasingly  to  his  notice,  there  came  to  him  doubts 
even  of  democracy  itself. 

He  had  not  accepted  the  humanitarian  dogma  of 
responsibility  without  the  rational  privilege  of  ap 
plying  it  to  whatever  came  within  the  humanitarian 
net;  and  now  he  saw  that  if  humanity  were  respon 
sible  for  the  better  conduct  of  the  future  it  was  also 
responsible  for  the  evil  of  the  present.  It  was  of 
the  essence  of  democracy  that  it  opened  up  for  ap 
plication  to  the  problems  of  social  life  all  existing 
human  wisdom.  In  the  vividness  of  his  horror  at 
the  spectacle  about  him  he  could  only  conclude  that 
that  wisdom  was,  in  so  far,  at  least,  inadequate  — 
that  it  had  not  found  human  life  so  plastic  or  itself 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  293 

so  skillful  as  to  make  the  spectacle  perceptibly  less 
terrible  to  compassionate  eyes.  For  the  zeal  of  his 
fathers  who  had  established  democracy  he  had  the 
defense  that  they  were  at  least  shifting  the  govern 
ment  from  the  tried  to  the  untried  —  from  the  tried 
few  under  whom  the  evil  of  life  had  seemed  un 
bearable,  to  the  untried  many  who  at  least  had 
suffered  and  been  disciplined  in  the  lessons  of  that 
evil.  For  him  now,  however,  there  was  still  the 
spectacle  of  that  evil  —  which  democracy  had  not 
cured  —  driving  him  to  seek  a  new,  a  wiser,  a  more 
compassionate  moulder  of  humanity  than  those  who 
had  been  tried  and  found  wanting.  And  when  he 
looked  about  him  for  a  new  and  untried  wisdom, 
he  found  in  socialism,  at  least,  no  shift.  If  the 
people  had  been  found  wanting  in  the  democracy, 
it  was  still  they  who  were,  hi  the  new  scheme,  to 
mould  a  plastic  humanity  —  the  same  wisdom  which 
had  put  evil  men  into  power,  passed  evil  laws,  failed 
to  enforce  good  ones,  and  failed  to  right  the  very 
wrongs  and  injustices  that  alone  were  driving  him 
to  seek  a  remedy. 

The  moral  struggle,  the  slow,  self-denying  labor 
that  went  to  the  building  up  of  character  was  too 
personal,  was  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case  too 
individual  to  be  much  helped  by  governmental  de 
vices.  And  when  he  heard  the  old  plea  that  the 
cure  for  democracy  was  more  democracy  he  could 
smile  sadly  at  the  pathos  of  the  hope.  For  what 
was  there  in  any  government  to  increase  the  virtue 
and  develop  the  characters  of  its  people.  And  the 
present  one  was  perfect  enough  in  theory  to  be  as 
good  as  the  people  who  made  it  up.  It  was  not  that 


294  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

he  had  lost  sympathy  for  the  poor  victims  of  in 
justice  and  degradation,  but  that  he  could  see  no 
wisdom  and  virtue  in  a  system  apart  from  the  wis 
dom  and  virtue  in  the  people  who  administered  it, 
and  he  saw  in  democracy  already  the  expressed 
quality  of  just  those  people  who  would  make  up 
the  new  regime.  He  saw  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
their  quality  would  be  better  under  a  vastly  more 
complex  and  more  difficult  system.  It  was  not, 
either,  that  he  despised  democracy.  He  was  bred 
to  it,  and  it  had  his  loyalty.  But  he  could  not  be 
lieve  that  socialism  would  be  better.  Indeed  his 
loyalty  to  democracy  was  loyalty  to  its  freedom, 
and  in  socialism  there  seemed  to  lurk  a  despotism 
that  destroyed  even  that.  For  freedom  was  moral 
opportunity. 

From  this  point  he  could  sum  up  his  case.  If 
wisdom  were  to  mold  humanity  it  was,  he  knew, 
no  one's  wisdom  but  theirs.  Theirs  he  had  looked 
at,  and  the  spectacle  of  its  products  had  driven  him 
afield  for  a  time  in  search  of  more  and  other  wisdom. 
But  at  last  he  had  come  back;  all  the  available  wis 
dom  to  guide  humanity  lay  in  the  minds  of  men, 
and  all  men  had  been  tried  —  the  one,  the  few,  the 
many  —  and  each  in  turn  had  been  found  in  some 
measure  wanting.  Now  there  was  nowhere  to  turn. 
The  pursuit  had  come  to  the  last  ditch.  There  was, 
however,  this  to  be  said  —  that  if  human  evolution 
did  depend  upon  human  wisdom  there  was  still 
something  to  be  done.  He  had  groped  to  this  point 
when  the  time  came  for  him  to  choose  between 
service  in  the  settlement  and  his  place  in  the  college. 
And  he  chose  the  college. 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  295 

It  was  not  without  misgivings  that  he  gave  up  the 
humanitarian  work  he  had  begun  so  earnestly.  It 
was  hard  to  convince  his  aggrieved  friends  that  he 
had  not  proved  disloyal  to  the  promises  of  his  old 
enthusiasm.  But  for  himself  he  knew  that  his  loy 
alty  was  unmarred.  He  was  a  humanitarian  still, 
but  he  had  shifted  the  field  of  his  labor.  With  his 
new  conception  the  college  became  a  place  trans 
figured.  There,  he  saw,  was  his  work.  He  went  to 
it  with  a  singing  heart. 

He  signalized  his  spiritual  return  to  the  college 
by  another  visit  to  the  advocatus  diaboli;  and  as 
from  the  earlier  one  he  came  away  charmed  but  in 
rebellion  at  his  host's  cloistered  seclusion  and  pre 
occupation  with  the  past.  He  broached  on  this 
occasion  his  own  conclusions  and  his  own  eagerness 
to  get  at  the  heart  of  his  problem.  The  reply  he 
evoked  was  but  a  qualified  approval. 

"You  are  right,  but  you  are  too  eager,"  said  his 
host.  "You  hope  for  immediate  returns  —  for  per 
ceptible  results  upon  the  evils  and  injustices  that 
none  of  us  can  shut  our  eyes  to.  But  unless  you  find 
deeper  ground  for  your  satisfaction  than  the  per 
ceptible  results  of  teaching  itself,  you  will  lose  heart. 
For  your  efforts  will  never  show.  There  are  re 
sults,  ultimate  and  imperceptible;  we  must  believe 
that  or  give  up.  But  the  hope  of  quick  returns  is 
the  curse  of  modern  life  —  in  business,  in  education, 
in  the  humanitarian  movement  itself." 

Our  youth  still  clung  to  the  humanitarian  hopes 
that  had  committed  him  so  recently  to  the  college. 
But  the  poison,  evil  or  good,  of  his  friend's  criticism 
clogged  the  flow  of  his  spirits  and  drove  him  back 


296  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

into  troubled  cogitations  that  seemed  for  a  time  to 
threaten  the  basis  of  all  his  hopes.  In  time  the  dull 
pain  at  the  fading  of  his  illusions  left  him  in  listless 
misery.  But  he  checked  his  discouragement  with 
some  vigor;  and  though  he  had  grown  sick  of  his 
own  thoughts,  and  sick  of  the  large  terms  in  which 
alone  he  could  cast  them,  he  forced  himself  back  to 
his  problem. 

His  rebellion  was  that  what  his  friend  had  told 
him  came  home  to  him  as  true.  But  he  had  so  set 
his  heart  on  perceptible  results  that  to  go  to  work 
in  bare  faith,  in  a  field  where  faith  itself  was  dying, 
was  intolerably  bitter.  There  were  times  when,  im 
patient  of  the  slow,  uncertain  effect  of  the  literature 
he  was  trying  to  create  a  concern  for  in  those 
younger  men  who  had  so  little  native  concern  for  it, 
he  was  tempted  to  stifle  his  doubts  and  in  the  face 
of  his  aloof  friend's  warning  and  his  own  better 
sense,  go  over  to  that  other  thing  within  the  college 
that  seemed  to  get  so  much  more  directly  at  the  im 
mediate  affairs  of  men.  He  was  tempted  to  go  over 
into  sociology. 

In  the  reflections  which,  now  that  he  was  used 
to  the  drive  of  an  emotion,  he  let  loose  hard  on  the 
heels  of  an  impulse,  it  was  only  the  distrust  of  his 
own  stability  that  kept  him  back.  So  baffled  was 
he,  so  empty,  that  in  despair  he  was  driven  into  the 
wilderness  for  fasting  and  prayer. 

When  he  emerged  there  was  a  spark  of  light  in 
his  soul,  and  though  it  did  not  at  once  illumine  all 
the  twistings  of  his  maze,  it  burned  steadily  and 
gave  him  hope. 

From  the  detachment  to  which  he  had  attained 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  297 

he  realized  how  arrogant  had  been  the  passion  of 
that  haste  with  which  he  had  tried  to  seize  upon 
life.  He  saw  the  shallow  impatience  of  even  that 
slower  process  with  which  he  had  come  back  to  the 
college.  He  saw  simply  and  with  shame  that  what 
in  crude  generalization  he  called  wisdom  was 
to  be  got  only  from  men  who  had  it.  The  phrase 
was  simple,  but  its  simplicity  was  not  significant  of 
the  revolution  that  it  created  in  his  humbled  mind. 
He  perceived  sharply  a  new  distinction  between  the 
intimate  passions  and  senses  on  the  one  hand,  and  on 
the  other  that  wisdom  which  it  was  so  important  to 
create  and  spread  among  a  responsible  humanity. 
For  whereas  the  former  were  inherent  and  born 
anew  in  the  body  of  every  man,  as  he  had  seen  on 
that  night  on  the  lake  shore,  the  latter,  wisdom,  was 
not  inherent,  and  would  die  outright  if  left  to  nature. 
He  saw  now  still  more  clearly  the  distinction  for 
which  he  had  groped  so  blindly  in  his  fruitless  col 
lege  days  —  that  the  spiritual  structure  was  that 
slow  accumulation  of  wisdom  which  men  had  so 
painfully  been  building  through  the  ages  —  an  in 
tangible  structure  which  nature  ignored,  which  lived 
outside  of  nature,  and  which  would  vanish  save  for 
its  voluntary,  painful  re-creation  by  those  who  mas 
tered  it  anew.  It  dwelt  nowhere  but  in  men's  minds, 
and  dwelt  there  only  by  perpetual  conscious  re- 
mastery. 

This,  then,  was  the  spiritual  structure;  this 
marked  the  eternal  distinction  between  nature  and 
human  nature;  this  was  the  human  product  which 
men  must  perpetually  renew  and  augment  if  human 
life  was  to  be  ennobled  in  its  own  peculiar  kind. 


2  98  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

He  bowed  humbly  before  the  idea,  with  a  shamed 
knowledge  that  he  was  but  arriving  at  a  sense  of 
life  attained  long  since  by  many  men  in  all  ages. 
But  he  took  comfort  in  the  thought  that  this  attain 
ment  itself  was  a  part  of  that  eternal  re-creation 
that  must  forever  go  on  if  the  spiritual  structure 
were  to  endure.  His  mind  swept  over  the  literature 
and  history  that  he  had  used  to  read  so  desultorily, 
so  keenly,  with  so  little  sense  of  its  significance,  but 
with  so  right  an  instinct  for  its  worth.  That  was 
the  human  accomplishment  —  the  humanities.  The 
word  put  on  a  meaning  not  objectively  different  from 
what  he  had  always  put  into  it,  but  subjectively 
enriched  and  vitalized  out  of  all  resemblance. 

He  looked  back  from  this  fresh  point  of  view 
with  a  quickened  understanding  of  his  humanitarian 
past.  The  word  still  had  for  him  a  connotation  so 
appealing  to  every  gentler  fiber  of  his  nature  that 
he  had  need  even  now  of  his  hard-earned  submission 
to  the  final  authority  of  his  reason.  It  was  not 
easy,  this  struggle  against  his  own  generosity  and 
against  the  silent  reproaches  of  friends  he  had  but 
now  so  devotedly  seconded.  But  he  had  tried  the 
humanitarians,  and  he  had  found  them  tainted  with 
impatience,  by  a  shallow  haste  to  apply  remedies  to 
the  symptoms  of  the  disease  they  had  set  out  to 
cure.  And  the  evil  itself  —  he  had  vague  glim 
merings  of  a  vision  in  which,  properly  speaking,  it 
was  not  really  an  evil  —  a  vision  in  which  he  saw 
the  slow  march  of  the  human  spirit  upon  the  chaos 
of  pure  animalism;  whatever  encroachments  hu 
manity  had  made  upon  the  stark  horror  of  brute 


In  Quest  of  the   Center  299 

life  was  so  much  gained  —  gained  by  the  slow  ac 
cumulation  of  a  knowledge  of  life,  the  slow  building 
up  of  the  spiritual  structure.  What  he,  and  they 
the  humanitarians,  had  so  much  shuddered  at  was 
the  still  unconquered  field  of  the  natural  man  —  the 
natural  as  sharply  distinguished  from  the  humane, 
a  remnant  rather  than  an  outgrowth.  He  saw  that 
if  they  and  he  found  it  an  evil,  they  found  it  so  by 
virtue  of  a  point  of  view  made  possible  by  that  at 
tainment  of  the  human  spirit  to  which  they  were 
latterly  become  so  inimical. 

For  those  who  worked  in  the  direct  relief  of 
suffering  he  still  retained  the  warmest  sympathy, 
knowing  that  what  they  did  was  a  good  in  itself. 
But  he  was  bitter  —  and  he  smiled  now  to  realize 
it  —  against  what  he  knew  so  well  from  his  own 
recollection  of  himself  —  the  humanitarian  antag 
onism  to  those  who  devoted  themselves  to  the  mas 
tery  and  perpetuation  of  what  men  had  already 
gained.  How  antagonistic  they  were  he  was  not 
left  without  present  reasons  for  knowing,  for  he  was 
filled  with  reproaches  from  many  sources.  But  it 
was  not  these  that  made  him  bitter;  it  was  the  per 
ception  that  it  had  been  the  humanitarian  diversion 
that  had  made  it  possible  for  him  to  pass  his  under 
graduate  years  so  wholly  blind  as  to  what  the  college 
and  he  were  there  for.  In  the  restful  security  of 
his  present  point  of  view  he  could  be  amazed  by 
those  honors  by  which  the  college  had  proclaimed 
that  he  had  got  the  best  it  had  to  offer.  Obviously 
it  had  ceased  to  think  of  itself  as  the  agent  of  that 
perpetual  re-creation  in  the  minds  of  men  of  the 
wisdom  by  which  life  was  to  be  made  humane. 


300  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

He  was  free  now  of  the  obstructive  trees,  and 
could  look  back  on  his  path  and  see  the  forest  he 
had  been  wandering  in.  He  had  come  out  not  far 
from  where  he  had  entered.  He  had  spent  a  waste 
ful  time  in  it.  But  he  was  not  without  something 
in  his  bag.  He  had  got  an  understanding  of  the 
environing  movement  of  his  time;  and  he  had  found 
his  way  out.  The  endearing  quest  for  happiness, 
striking  across-lots  direct  for  its  elusive  object 
through  the  old  pathetic  deceptions  of  the  senses 
and  the  passions,  and  through  the  simple  elemen 
tary  passion  for  material  possession,  had  lost  its 
way.  They  had  forgot,  these  eager  questers,  that 
only  the  slow  development  of  wisdom  could  produce 
the  happiness  they  longed  for.  And  even  those 
generous  few  who  were  sacrificing  themselves  to 
care  for  the  poor  had  forgot  that  in  trying  to  bend 
every  instrument  to  the  direct  relief  of  poverty  and 
to  the  immediate  wants  of  the  multitude  they  were 
destroying  the  means  of  whatever  ultimate  amelior 
ation  of  the  human  lot  there  could  be. 

The  age  of  unprecedented  concern  for  the  poor 
was  an  age  of  unprecedented  wealth.  Clearly  some 
thing  was  wrong.  When  he  looked  to  the  ultimate 
vision  of  the  humanitarians  he  saw  that  the  modi 
fications  which  they  were  making  in  social  life,  in 
government,  and  in  education  all  looked  toward  a 
bodily,  not  a  spiritual  end  —  toward  ease,  and  phys 
ical  comfort,  and  a  more  general  leisure.  Leisure! 
He  knew  that  in  the  word  leisure  was  implied  a  hope 
for  all  those  things  of  the  spirit  for  which  he  himself 
cared.  But  he  saw  how  futile  that  hope  was  bound 
to  turn  out  in  the  event.  He  himself  had  been 


In  Quest  of  the   Center  301 

poor.  He  had  emerged  from  poverty  by  dint  of  a 
care  for  the  things  of  the  spirit.  He  had  found 
leisure  for  the  pursuit  of  those  things.  But  though 
he  had  longed  for  them  passionately,  and  had  gone 
to  those  seats  where  by  old  tradition  they  were 
supposed  to  be  found,  he  could  not  find  them.  Even 
so  soon  had  they  been  driven  into  obscure  corners 
and  discredited  in  the  general  repute  by  the  hu 
manitarians  in  their  impatience  for  the  nearer  ends. 
And  he  saw  in  himself  a  symbol  of  that  future  time 
for  which  they  hoped,  when  all  should  have  leisure, 
but  when,  alas,  the  traditions  of  that  life  of  the 
spirit  should  have  fled  even  from  the  obscure  corners 
in  which  at  last  he  had  so  fortuitously  found  it. 

The  humanitarians  had  dominated  the  age.  And 
if  they  had  not  kept  it  from  being  an  age  of  luxury 
and  an  age  of  oppression  —  how  could  they  with 
their  own  ideal  so  much  akin  to  the  ideal  of  the 
rich?  —  they  had  managed  to  discredit  the  disin 
terested  pursuit  of  humane  wisdom.  For  our  youth, 
however,  who  had  struggled  so  long  to  orientate  the 
chaos  of  his  own  vision  of  life,  and  whose  horror 
was  of  the  devotion  of  his  spirit  to  an  end  which  he 
could  not  square  with  the  order  of  that  vision,  and 
who  had  learned  to  live  without  approval,  content 
with  despised  causes,  there  was  exhilaration  in  the 
sense  that  at  last  he  had  found  what  from  the  first 
he  had  so  ardently  longed  for.  He  saw  how  right 
had  been  the  instincts  and  vague  desires  with  which 
he  had  years  ago  sought  out  the  college,  how  right 
had  been  the  rebellion  of  that  little  group  of  friends 
who  had  so  stubbornly  resisted  to  the  end  the 
temptation  to  fall  into  an  easy  and  popular 
acquiescence. 


302  A  Lover  of  the  Chair 

He  knew  with  bitterness  that  they  had  not  wholly 
escaped  its  spell  —  that  if  it  had  won  their  open 
rebellion  in  failing  to  guide  them  whither  they  so 
longed  to  go,  it  had  none  the  less  by  its  constant 
pressure  and  by  their  exposure  to  every  wind  of 
chance  influence  bent  them  at  last,  unconsciously, 
to  its  own  attitude.  He  saw  how  his  best  years  had 
slipped  by  leaving  his  mind  ignorant,  unformed  by 
that  knowledge  that  he  saw  now  to  be  the  basis  of 
human  wisdom.  He  abhorred  the  vague  terms  in 
which  he  was  condemned  to  do  his  thinking.  But 
his  bitterness  was  blunted  by  his  exultation  that 
however  empty,  however  ignorant  he  had  emerged, 
he  was  at  last  aware  of  that  spiritual  structure  to 
which  his  own  spirit  had  felt  so  vaguely  akin,  and 
in  which  he  had  so  long  put  his  rebellious  faith. 

He  carried  his  conception  humbly  to  that  obscure 
Grecian  who  in  his  earlier  gropings  had  so  irritated 
his  humanitarian  impatience,  but  whom  he  now  saw 
as  a  repository  of  what  was  most  worthy  in  human 
life.  For  in  realizing  that  the  spiritual  structure, 
the  humanizing  product  of  men's  thought  and  wis 
dom,  kept  its  tenuous  life  so  precariously,  and  had 
its  life  at  all  only  in  men's  minds,  he  saw  how  su 
preme  was  the  value  of  those  men  who  shut  them 
selves —  perforce,  to-day,  alas  —  aloof  from  the 
world,  mastered  the  records  of  the  past,  wrote  their 
few  volumes,  taught,  or  perhaps  merely  preserved 
by  their  example  the  tradition  of  the  love  of  learn 
ing.  And  there  by  that  fireside,  where  he  had  so 
rebelled  at  those  long  ranks  of  books,  he  took  up 
the  discipline  which  the  college  had  denied  him,  in 
pursuit  of  an  end  from  which  it  had  so  nearly 


In  Quest  of  the  Center  303 

weaned  him.  And  though  the  years  were  gone,  and 
though  his  mind  was  formed  in  its  own  formlessness, 
yet  he  turned  eagerly  to  its  tardy  cultivation.  He 
began  in  reality  the  life  of  the  spirit.  For  he  was, 
in  the  triumph  of  his  vision,  at  last  justified  of  his 
abiding  faith  that  there  was  something  there  to 
build  up. 


THE   END 


SOUTHERN  BRANCH, 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 

LIBRARY, 

(LOS  ANGELAS.  CALIF. 


